Ship Street Folkestone: FHDC Backs 85-Home Orbit Scheme as Hidden Land Value and ‘400 People’ Claim Raise Questions

FHDC has approved another £132,000 for Ship Street after being told 85 homes could remove nearly 400 people from the housing waiting list. The trouble is that the list counts households, the bedroom mix hasn’t been published and the figures would require almost five residents in every property.

By The Shepway Vox Team

“It’s a no brainer.”

That was Cllr Connor McConville’s final pitch before Folkestone & Hythe District councillors voted to place another £132,000 for Ship Street into the council’s capital programme.

McConville said roughly £1m spent through the Housing Revenue Account would provide about four council homes, accommodating perhaps 15 or 16 people. Spend that money unlocking Ship Street, he argued, and the result would be 85 homes capable of taking “nearly 400 people” off the housing waiting list. Then the hands went up: 17 councillors in favour, six against and three abstaining.

It was a neat comparison, wrapped up with a bow and delivered just before the vote. It was also built on arithmetic that FHDC hasn’t supported with a published bedroom mix, allocation model or household-size calculation.

The council’s housing register contains 1,320 active households, not 1,320 individual people. Eighty-five properties could therefore provide first lettings to no more than 85 registered households, assuming every home is rented, every letting passes through the council and every successful applicant is already on FHDC’s list. That would address about 6.4% of the present register—not remove nearly 400 applications. FHDC’s own figures show exactly how the register is counted.

McConville’s claim may have sounded like a rabbit pulled from a hat. Follow the workings, however, and it leaves the council with another awkward question: where are all those people meant to sleep?

The maths needs more bedrooms

McConville told the chamber:

“Based on our business plan, our HRA business plan, one million pounds will deliver us about four units. So we’re taking, I don’t know, what, at best 15, 16 people off our waiting list.”

He continued:

“Okay, one million pounds will unlock this site and deliver 85 homes. 85 homes that people can only rent by applying to a council and from a housing waiting list. So that is nearly 400 people off our waiting list potentially on this site. It’s a no brainer.”

Dividing 400 people between 85 homes produces an average of 4.71 residents in every property.

That wouldn’t automatically prove statutory overcrowding. The legal room and space standards depend on the number and dimensions of rooms, the residents’ ages, their sex and their relationships to one another. New homes can perfectly properly be designed for five, six or more people. The point is that FHDC hasn’t published evidence showing Ship Street will be such a large-family scheme. The Government’s overcrowding guidance confirms that the legal assessment turns on room and space standards, not simply the average number of residents per address.

The council’s own waiting-list figures make the 4.7 assumption look especially fanciful. Of the 1,320 active households, 666 require one bedroom and another 311 require two. Together, one- and two-bedroom need accounts for 977 households, or just over 74% of everyone currently waiting.

Only 70 households are assessed as needing four bedrooms, while 17 need five or more.

Unless the proposed 85 homes are heavily weighted towards four- and five-bedroom family properties, McConville’s estimate would be tantamount to assuming overcrowding as part of the arithmetic. Put more plainly, you can’t promise almost five people per front door while keeping the number and size of the bedrooms behind those doors under your hat.

There’s also an inconsistency inside McConville’s own comparison. His four hypothetical council homes were estimated to house between 3.75 and four people each. His 85 Ship Street homes were then expected to average 4.7.

No evidence was offered for either assumption.

A defensible claim would have been that Ship Street could provide first lettings for up to 85 waiting-list households and accommodate an unknown number of individual adults and children, depending on the eventual bedroom mix. That still represents a sizeable housing benefit. It simply isn’t the same as saying nearly 400 people will come off the waiting list.

The vote moved the money—not the land

Wednesday’s decision didn’t finally sell Ship Street or commit Orbit to building 85 homes. Full Council’s formal job was narrower: approve the additional budget’s inclusion in the 2026/27 Medium-Term Capital Programme.

Cabinet had already endorsed the project’s revised planning and funding strategy. The extra £132,000 allows further architectural work, ecology surveys, valuation and agency services, legal advice, planning work and contingency to proceed. The official agenda makes clear that the budget had been approved in principle but required Full Council’s authority before being added to the programme.

The developer still hadn’t made a substantive financial offer when councillors received the report.

That matters because The Shepway Vox Team revealed on 20 July that potential public acquisition and enabling expenditure could reach £1,427,183 before a home is built. That figure comprises the £400,000 land purchase, £814,000 already spent, £29,000 committed and a further £184,183 package of work, of which £132,000 required new budget approval.

Separate again is the £2.5m Brownfield Land Release Fund award intended to support remediation.

The two figures shouldn’t be lumped together as though they’re the same pot. The £1.427m covers acquisition and professional enabling work; the £2.5m is a separate public grant tied to unlocking the contaminated land. Both are public resources, but they serve different purposes and carry different conditions.

If both sums were ultimately used in full, the public resources connected with acquiring, preparing and remediating Ship Street would approach £3.927m before counting the housing provider’s construction finance. Spread across 85 proposed homes, that comes to roughly £46,200 per property.

That may still be good value. Ship Street is a contaminated former gasworks with awkward levels, retaining walls, biodiversity issues and a track record capable of ageing council officers before their time.

Yet it demonstrates why “four homes versus 85” is too tidy by half.

Four council homes bought or built for £1m would remain assets within FHDC’s Housing Revenue Account. The council would own them, receive the rents and retain control over future tenancies.

The 85 Ship Street homes would apparently be owned by an outside registered provider. FHDC could secure nomination rights and affordable-housing protections, but it wouldn’t necessarily own the bricks and mortar or receive the rental income. One option produces fewer council assets; the other uses public land and subsidy to leverage a much larger number of externally owned homes.

Both routes can serve the public. They aren’t like-for-like.

Comparing them solely by counting front doors is rather like comparing the cost of buying four buses with a grant that helps another operator run 85 services. The larger number looks smashing on a leaflet, but ownership, income, risk and long-term control still matter.

Orbit steps into the light

Until the meeting, FHDC’s public report referred only to an unnamed interested developer.

Council Leader Jim Martin then told members:

“The developer isn’t a private developer, it’s a registered charity. It’s a registered charity called Orbit Housing Association.”

That identification moves the story forward, but it doesn’t settle the legal arrangement.

Orbit Housing Association Limited is a registered provider of social housing. Orbit’s wider corporate structure also includes Orbit Group Limited and Orbit Homes (2020) Limited, which Orbit describes as a private, non-charitable company. Orbit Homes develops properties across several tenures, including social rent, shared ownership and market sale.

There’s nothing improper in a housing group using different legal entities. It’s common practice.

FHDC must nevertheless say which Orbit body will acquire the land, which one will enter the planning and funding agreements, who will build the homes, who will own them afterwards and where the rent will go. Martin’s statement that Orbit Housing Association is a registered charity doesn’t answer those nuts-and-bolts questions.

Nor does it establish that all 85 homes will be Social Rent.

McConville’s assertion that the properties would be homes “that people can only rent by applying to a council and from a housing waiting list” appears to rule out outright market sale and may imply that all 85 will be rented. But his wording referred to “a council”, not specifically FHDC, and the published report hasn’t supplied a tenure schedule or nomination agreement.

The council should therefore confirm whether the scheme contains Social Rent, Affordable Rent, shared ownership or any other tenure; whether FHDC receives 100% of first nominations; and whether those rights continue whenever a property becomes vacant.

Until then, “100% affordable” remains a broad label stuck on a closed box.

No adverse RSH ruling—but Orbit’s record isn’t spotless

We found no published adverse judgement or regulatory notice against Orbit from the Regulator of Social Housing.

Orbit’s latest published regulatory judgement, dated 17 December 2025, gives the group a G1 governance grade and a V2 financial-viability grade. G1 is the highest governance rating. V2 means Orbit meets the regulator’s viability requirements and can withstand a reasonable range of adverse scenarios, although it has reduced financial headroom and must manage material risks.

The regulator attributed that reduced capacity to investment in existing homes, new development and Orbit’s sales programme. It also made clear that the stability check didn’t assess performance against the consumer standards.

There is therefore no regulatory smoking gun suggesting Orbit is financially or organisationally unfit to participate in Ship Street.

However, residents are entitled to see the whole shop window rather than only the polished display. The Housing Ombudsman—an entirely separate body from the Regulator of Social Housing—has issued serious findings against Orbit over its treatment of existing tenants.

In December 2022, the Ombudsman found severe maladministration after damp, mould and a slug infestation were left unresolved for an extended period. Orbit was ordered to pay £5,000 and either complete the necessary works or find suitable accommodation.

Further cases produced more severe-maladministration findings concerning damp, mould, water ingress, repairs and complaint handling. In 2024, the Ombudsman used its wider powers to order an independent review of Orbit’s policies and practices after seven damp-and-mould cases involving maladministration, including severe maladministration. The resulting review made 15 recommendations.

As recently as 10 February 2026, the Housing Ombudsman issued two separate decisions finding maladministration in Orbit Housing Association’s handling of damp-and-mould cases. In one, Orbit failed to complete promised works within a reasonable time; in the other, an overlooked report contributed to a 16-week repair delay.

These findings don’t prove that new homes at Ship Street would be defective or poorly managed. It would be unfair to make that leap. They do show why FHDC’s due diligence should extend beyond Orbit’s balance sheet and charitable status to repairs performance, complaint handling, damp-and-mould controls and the consumer experience offered to future tenants.

A registered provider’s job doesn’t finish when the ribbon is cut.

Council housing or housing-association homes?

The chamber’s real dividing line wasn’t whether Ship Street should be developed. Nobody was waving the flag for another 70 years of fencing and weeds.

The row was over what the public should receive after years of expenditure, risk and professional work.

Cllr Adrian Lockwood referred to Labour’s 2023 pledge to build more council housing and reduce the waiting list. He acknowledged the money invested in existing homes, praised officers’ work and accepted that FHDC had bought properties from developers for its own stock.

His difficulty lay elsewhere:

“I hope members will see that this is a difficult journey to go from, holds up imaginary manifesto, to the cabinet member asking us to agree, extra funding so that it can be invested in this piece of land to be sold to a developer who is not going to build any council houses.”

Cllr Jackie Meade, who said she lived about 100 yards from Ship Street, called it the “Perfect place for council housing”.

She feared an outside provider might later point to remediation costs and say:

“We cannot afford to put sustainable housing on here because we’re going to have to decontaminate it.”

Meade compared the risk with Princes Parade and said she wouldn’t support the proposal.

Cllr Rebecca Shoob Cabinet Member for Housing  took the pragmatic side. She described the plan as an opportunity to deliver “100 % affordable housing” and argued that waiting indefinitely for councils to receive greater housebuilding powers would leave families stuck on the register.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly supplied the obvious question:

“Affordable for whom?”

She said affordable and council housing were distinct terms and called it “a bit disingenuous” to describe properties as affordable where they remained beyond the reach of Folkestone residents.

Cllr Bridget Chapman went further, arguing that regeneration in Folkestone had pushed rents upwards and encouraged what she called “greedy landlords” to remove families through Section 21 notices. Her conclusion was aimed directly at Martin:

“And this regeneration, Jim, this doesn’t do it.”

Cllr Stephen Scoffham accepted much of that criticism. He described affordable rent as a misleading term and strongly supported more council housing, but ultimately backed Ship Street on “purely pragmatic grounds”. The site had lain empty for decades, he said, and needed dealing with.

That’s the choice councillors faced: pursue 85 housing-association homes through the deal currently available, or retain the site while hoping that a council-owned scheme becomes financially possible later.

There’s no honest case for pretending the second option carries no risk. Ship Street has already swallowed time, money and several bright ideas without producing a single front door.

Equally, there’s no honest case for pretending 85 externally owned affordable homes are the same public asset as 85 council houses.

Stronger words than the paperwork

The meeting produced promises that go further than FHDC’s published report.

Orbit was publicly named. McConville appeared to say every home would be rented through a council waiting list. The scheme was credited with the potential to accommodate nearly 400 people.

Those claims now need pinning to the legal agreement, rather than being left fluttering in the council chamber like bunting after the fête.

Before disposal, FHDC should identify the precise Orbit entity buying the land; publish the final consideration once commercial confidentiality ends; disclose the bedroom and tenure mix; state the Social Rent and Affordable Rent proportions; set out nomination and local-connection rights; and explain whether affordability will be protected at every future letting.

It should also disclose the basis for the 400-person figure.

The transaction needs delivery deadlines, grant protections and clawback provisions if the land is resold, the number of affordable homes falls, the tenure changes or development doesn’t proceed. Public land shouldn’t leave the council’s hands on little more than crossed fingers and a favourable following wind.

The council’s current timetable points towards an outline resolution in November 2026, a reserved-matters application in December, approval in March 2027 and disposal in June.

Ship Street has watched plenty of timetables sail past.

Councillors were told the latest proposition was a “no brainer”. Yet there’s still no substantive financial offer in the public domain, the land value remains hidden, the final tenures aren’t published and the claim used to clinch the argument assumes almost 4.7 people behind every front door.

Eighty-five genuinely affordable homes would be a substantial prize for East Folkestone. But without a scheme dominated by larger family properties, nearly 400 residents would be less a housing calculation than an assumption of overcrowding.

FHDC must now show the working, nail down the tenures and turn Wednesday night’s promises into enforceable obligations.

A show of hands isn’t a housing guarantee.

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent is NOT a Crime