Everist Court Lyminge: The Battle Over FHDC’s Five Social Homes and Former Age UK Community Centre

Folkestone & Hythe District Council owns Everist Court, has already committed more than £630,000 to turning it into housing, and must now determine its own planning application. But this is no straightforward battle between new homes and nostalgia. The council knew there was demand for a community hub, its own planners warned what would have to be proved, and Whitehall has rewritten national planning policy while the application has been live.

On 17 June 2025, Folkestone & Hythe District Council formally placed Jubilee House at Everist Court, 63 Station Road, Lyminge (pictured below), on its list of Assets of Community Value. It had been nominated by Lyminge Community Hub CIC. Fourteen months later, the same council is seeking planning permission to end the building’s lawful community use and convert the whole thing into five flats.

That sounds like a contradiction.

It is. But it isn’t quite the gotcha it first appears to be.

An Asset of Community Value isn’t a preservation order and doesn’t freeze a building in its existing use. Government planning data explicitly says ACV status doesn’t restrict what an owner can do with its property, although the listing can become a material consideration when a change of use is sought. So the fact FHDC listed Everist Court doesn’t, by itself, prevent FHDC from converting it.

The real question is harder: has FHDC actually produced enough evidence to justify losing this particular community facility?

Because the housing need is real. So is the community’s claim to the building.

And once we went through the planning application, the objections, the building’s history, FHDC’s earlier decisions and the brand-new National Planning Policy Framework published on 17 August, that balancing act became considerably more interesting.

A community building that almost became housing overnight

Everist Court hasn’t always been a community centre. The applicant’s own planning history says it was approved as offices in July 1964 under CH/8/64/144, converted into four flats in August 1975 under SH/75/763, and partly occupied by Age Concern from 1977. Former residential areas were adapted for communal, dining, kitchen and support facilities. The submitted statement says permissions in 2004 and 2008 extended Age Concern’s facilities and converted the remaining residential accommodation to day-care use. The crucial planning fact is unambiguous: residential use ceased roughly 17 years ago and the present lawful use is as a day-care centre.

Age UK finally surrendered its occupation on 31 March 2025. Five building guardians have since lived there temporarily, but that doesn’t magically turn the lawful planning use back into housing. FHDC’s own pre-application advice expressly acknowledged that a change-of-use application was required.

Age UK’s departure wasn’t some mysterious decision either. In December 2024 the charity explained that reduced government and external funding, coupled with rent, maintenance, safety checks, repairs and insurance, meant the building was costing substantially more to operate than its activities, shop and café generated. The dementia day service moved to Hythe, the laundry service ceased and Age UK said keeping the building open would threaten the sustainability of its wider services.

That proves Everist Court had become financially unsustainable for Age UK’s operation.

It doesn’t prove that no different community organisation, on a different rent, with volunteers, grants, different services or only part of the building, could make community use work. FHDC’s own January 2026 Cabinet report was careful on precisely this point: it said the property had ceased to be viable within Age UK’s “current business operating model”.

What happened next is revealing.

On 2 April 2025, effectively as Age UK was leaving, the future of Everist Court was already being debated at Full Council. Cllr Jennifer Hollingsbee told Leader Cllr Jim Martin that the proposed Lyminge Community Hub CIC had submitted a draft proposal to retain Everist Court as a community facility and wanted to meet him.

Martin’s recorded answer made FHDC’s direction pretty clear. He said returning the building to affordable flats for older people was believed to be in the Housing Revenue Account’s best interests and that he supported that course. He pointed to the Tayne Centre, Methodist Church, Scout Hut and Village Hall as alternatives with “varying degrees of capacity”. Asked whether the housing decision had effectively already been made, he said he’d attend the community meeting with “an open mind”, but added that he’d need a very convincing argument for another use because of the housing crisis.

Then came the ACV listing in June.

Then came the money.

By 21 January 2026, Cabinet was being asked to increase Everist Court’s budget from £300,000 to £630,775. Cabinet agreed unanimously, with £200,000 moved from the HRA Carbon Improvement budget and £130,775 from an underspend on Sandgate High Street flats. FHDC said five “Age Designated” affordable homes could now be created instead of four.

And “Age Designated” needs explaining. FHDC’s own report says these are essentially general-needs homes for people aged 50 or over. They’re not the same thing as the council’s Independent Living schemes, which are normally aimed at people over 60 and include an Independent Living Officer and communal facilities. So describing Everist Court simply as five homes “for the elderly” is misleadingly broad.

The January programme envisaged a planning application in early 2026, construction beginning that summer and handover in late 2026. In reality the application appeared in August. The scheme was already months behind its own timetable before the planning argument really got going.

There’s another curious detail. By January FHDC’s report already acknowledged significant community interest, a group wanting to lease Everist Court as a hub and the ACV listing. Yet the summary risk table identified one project risk: Cabinet might not approve the budget virements. Planning refusal, community-facility policy, the ACV and the organised opposition weren’t identified there as project risks.

Then FHDC’s planners warned FHDC

Before submitting the application, FHDC sought pre-application planning advice from its own planning service.

And this is where the paper trail gets particularly awkward.

Officers highlighted Policy C2 – Safeguarding Community Facilities in FHDC’s adopted Places and Policies Local Plan. They said the policy protects community facilities unless it can be shown there’s no longer demand locally, supported by evidence that the premises have been actively marketed for at least 12 months before the planning application. The sale or rent also has to be realistic for the existing use and supported by a commercial estate-agent valuation.

If community need still exists, officers said an alternative should be provided either on site or somewhere well-related and easily accessible to the community.

They weren’t satisfied merely by a list of other halls.

The pre-application response specifically noted that the Tayne Centre, Village Hall, Methodist Church and Scout Hut had been suggested, but said it hadn’t been made clear how that would work or whether those organisations had even been approached. It concluded: “Any application would need to robustly justify the loss of the former community use” against the policy or demonstrate that alternatives could be provided.

To be fair to FHDC, the eventual application does more than the early submission did.

The Design and Access Statement says the four venues have now been approached and “can be available for community use”. It goes on to provide floor areas: one hall is shown at 196.4 square metres, the Village Hall schedule totals 385.91 square metres, and another venue schedule totals 268.68 square metres. The document says the Scout Hut and Village Hall have spaces capable of accommodating community activities.

That’s evidence. It shouldn’t be dismissed.

But a floor area isn’t the same thing as a replacement service.

In the application material we’ve examined, we haven’t found a detailed timetable showing when each room is actually free, secured agreements guaranteeing future availability, comparative hire costs, or a proper activity-by-activity assessment of whether the social space, café-style activity, advice, support and other functions associated with Everist Court can genuinely be replicated. Peter Barnes’ objection goes straight at that gap, arguing that the alternatives are already used and don’t provide a realistic replacement. Whether he ultimately proves that is another matter, but it’s a perfectly proper planning question.

More importantly, we haven’t found the 12 months of active marketing evidence which FHDC’s own pre-application advice said Policy C2 required.

There was a valuation. Motis Estates assessed annual rental value at £19,500, current commercial freehold value at £220,000, value with residential planning permission at £305,000, and estimated completed development value at £915,000. But valuing a property isn’t the same as putting its existing community use to the market and discovering whether anybody will take it on.

That distinction matters because FHDC has previously applied Policy C2 firmly to other applicants. On 1 August 2025, it refused permission to turn a private members’ club at 10 Broomfield Road, Folkestone, into six flats because the applicant hadn’t demonstrated there was no longer demand for the community facility, backed by marketing at a realistic sale or rental price for an acceptable period. FHDC cited Policy C2 alongside national and Core Strategy policy.

That doesn’t automatically dictate the Everist Court result. Every application has to be decided on its own merits, and national policy has just changed dramatically.

But consistency matters.

Five flats matter too

It would be daft to pretend FHDC has invented the housing crisis to get this scheme through.

As at 2 August 2026, there were 1,332 active households on the district’s housing waiting list. Some 661 need one-bedroom accommodation. During the preceding 12 months only 125 one-bedroom homes were let; the average wait was 76 weeks and the longest was 592 weeks.

The Everist Court application uses slightly earlier figures: 1,320 households on the register, 655 needing one bedroom, approximately 288 eligible for sheltered accommodation, more than 120 households in temporary accommodation and about 12 older households in temporary accommodation with support needs.

Those numbers carry weight.

But FHDC’s own planning officer anticipated the weakness in using district-wide figures to justify this particular scheme. At pre-application stage the officer said the three proposed M4(2) homes were positive, but that if FHDC wanted an identified local need for older people or people with mobility requirements to count positively, that need had to be clearly evidenced with the application.

We haven’t found a figure in the submitted application telling us how many applicants specifically require an age-designated home in Lyminge, how many need an M4(2) property there, how many have expressed Lyminge as a preference, or what vacancy and turnover rates are for comparable nearby stock. January’s Cabinet report merely says “a number” of people had expressed a preference for a semi-rural location such as Lyminge.

And there’s a technical distinction worth getting right. The application repeatedly describes three flats as “fully accessible” M4(2) units. Government’s Approved Document M calls Category 2 “accessible and adaptable dwellings”; Category 3 is “wheelchair user dwellings”. M4(2) remains a worthwhile accessibility benefit, but it shouldn’t be oversold as the wheelchair-user standard.

The residents need to be equally careful with their numbers. The claim that Lyminge already has 79 over-55 social homes hasn’t been substantiated in the evidence we’ve found. FHDC does confirm that Nailbourne Court has 30 flats plus nine Palm Tree Way bungalows — 39 properties — and that Nailbourne is an Independent Living scheme. That service is normally available to people over 60, or disabled people of any age in certain circumstances. So 79 should presently be described as unverified, not repeated as settled fact.

There are weaker objections too. Parking probably isn’t where opponents should hang their hat. The transport survey recorded five vacant Everist Court spaces during the day and three at night, and calculated the five flats would add no more than around two two-way vehicle movements in the development peak hour. KCC Highways said the proposal didn’t meet its normal threshold for involvement unless FHDC identified specific material highway-safety concerns.

Likewise, Everist Court sits within the Kent Downs National Landscape, but this is principally a conversion with limited external alteration rather than a great slab of new development across open countryside. The Kent Downs team hasn’t objected; it has reminded FHDC of its strengthened statutory duty to seek to further the conservation and enhancement of the National Landscape. It needs addressing, but on the evidence currently available it doesn’t look like the heart of this dispute.

The heart of it is still community use versus housing.

And then, halfway through the argument, Whitehall changed the rules.

The planning rulebook changed on 17 August

Application 26/1203/FH was being consulted upon under one National Planning Policy Framework.

On 17 August 2026, the Government published an entirely new NPPF, replacing the December 2024 version. It applies as a material consideration to planning decisions from the day it was published. So although the application and early objections were drafted under the old rules, FHDC now has to determine Everist Court against the new ones.

That means Peter Barnes was perfectly entitled on 16 August to quote old NPPF paragraph 98 about guarding against unnecessary loss of valued facilities. But paragraph 98 is no longer the national policy FHDC must apply when it eventually decides the application. His underlying planning argument survives; its national-policy address has changed.

The replacement is HC6 — Retention of key community facilities and public service infrastructure.

HC6 says development shouldn’t result in the loss of a key community facility unless one of three routes is satisfied. Broadly, there must be no reasonable prospect of retaining the use because community support is insufficient or the operation isn’t viable or feasible; or equivalent or better provision must replace it somewhere with comparable or better accessibility; or there must already be enough provision of the same type locally that losing the facility won’t diminish community access. Community halls are expressly included within the policy.

There’s a rather important detail in there. HC6 expressly requires at least 12 months’ marketing where commercial viability is at issue for shops and pubs. It doesn’t impose that express national marketing requirement on every community hall. FHDC’s local Policy C2 is therefore more prescriptive than the new national wording.

That doesn’t mean C2 has vanished.

Planning law still says applications should be determined in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise. But Annex A of the new NPPF says any part of a development-plan policy which is materially inconsistent with a national decision-making policy should receive very limited weight; older policies shouldn’t lose weight simply because they’re old. FHDC will therefore need to decide, and explain, whether C2’s 12-month requirement is materially inconsistent with HC6 or simply a legitimate local evidential requirement sitting alongside it. That is planning judgment, not something either side can safely declare settled in advance.

There’s another change which could matter enormously in Lyminge. The December 2025 draft HC6 said its protection would apply only where the community facility was the last of its type in the area. The final August 2026 policy removed that restriction altogether. Instead, FHDC now has to make a judgment under HC6(c) about whether existing alternatives are sufficient so that losing Everist Court wouldn’t actually diminish access.

In other words, simply saying “there’s already a Village Hall and Scout Hut” isn’t the end of the conversation.

But nor can campaigners simply say “Everist Court is an ACV, therefore it stays”.

The evidence about what those alternative buildings can actually provide has suddenly become even more important.

The new NPPF changes another part of FHDC’s pre-application reasoning. The officer advice said the council couldn’t demonstrate a five-year housing-land supply and therefore the old “tilted balance” favoured granting permission. The August Framework has replaced that old structure. Everist Court is within Lyminge’s defined settlement boundary, so the new S4 applies: development within settlements should be approved unless its benefits are substantially outweighed by adverse effects assessed against the national decision-making policies. HC6 is now one of those national policies.

So the planning balance remains favourable to development within settlements — strongly so — but FHDC can’t simply recycle the pre-application paragraph about the old tilted balance and leave it at that.

The law moved while the paperwork was on the table.

Older and disabled people are on both sides of this balance

There’s an equality dimension here which ought not to be treated as boilerplate.

Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 places the Public Sector Equality Duty on public authorities. Among other things, FHDC must have due regard to eliminating unlawful discrimination, advancing equality of opportunity and fostering good relations. The courts have confirmed that granting planning permission is an exercise of a statutory function to which the duty applies. Age and disability are plainly relevant to this proposal.

The positive equality case for the flats is easy to understand: affordable homes that can better accommodate people with changing mobility needs can improve independence and housing choice.

But equality doesn’t work in only one direction.

Everist Court’s previous community use included dementia care, advice, social activity, a café and contact for older residents. Roy and Peggy Bowling describe it as “a vital community facility” used by young and old for activities, advice and socialising. Sally Robinson specifically raises rural social isolation. Those are representations, not independently proven conclusions, but they’re precisely the sort of potential effects on older and disabled people a decision-maker should consciously consider.

The relevance of that isn’t theoretical. In R (Buckley) v Bath and North East Somerset Council, planning permission for a housing regeneration scheme was quashed for breach of the Public Sector Equality Duty even though the development itself included a dedicated older-persons complex and accessible apartments. An equality benefit on one side of a proposal doesn’t remove the need to assess possible equality harm on the other.

FHDC’s January Cabinet paper said there were no equality implications directly arising from that report, because Cabinet was being asked to approve financial virements. Fair enough. But the later planning decision is a different statutory exercise. The important thing now isn’t whether somebody produces a document with “Equality Impact Assessment” stamped across the front; it’s whether the eventual decision demonstrates that the relevant equality effects were consciously considered, with evidence.

Five homes or one hub isn’t the only possible question

Residents have repeatedly suggested a compromise.

Roy and Peggy Bowling suggest retaining community use on the ground floor while finding a way to accommodate the council’s housing ambition elsewhere within or above the building. Sally Robinson makes a similar proposal. J Dixon reduces the whole argument to four words:

“It could be shared.”

That doesn’t mean a shared scheme is technically or financially viable. A roof extension, mixed use, fire separation, sound insulation, accessible entrances, safeguarding and revised costs would all require proper professional work.

But there’s a difference between an alternative being unworkable and simply not being the scheme currently preferred.

If FHDC concludes that retaining any community element on site isn’t feasible, it should be able to demonstrate why. That becomes particularly important when its own Policy C2 refers to replacement on site or somewhere well-related to the community, HC6 now protects frequently used community facilities, and equality law requires conscious consideration of impacts and sensible mitigation.

Nor is there anything unlawful about FHDC deciding its own planning application. Local authorities can grant themselves permission under the Town and Country Planning General Regulations 1992. The safeguards matter, though: the planning decision must be kept separate from those responsible for managing the land, and council-promoted applications should go through the planning system on their planning merits rather than receiving a home-team advantage.

That’s why Everist Court deserves more than a box-ticking exercise.

FHDC has a strong case for creating five affordable homes. The waiting list is grim, one-bedroom waits are long, and three M4(2) homes would add accommodation that’s easier to adapt as residents’ needs change. Those benefits are real and shouldn’t be brushed aside because a campaign exists.

Lyminge’s residents have a serious case too. This isn’t a building somebody suddenly decided was precious after a housing application appeared. Community use reaches back to the 1970s; FHDC itself accepted the building as an Asset of Community Value; the council knew a CIC wanted to operate a hub; and its own planners warned months ago that the loss of the community use required robust justification.

The campaigners still have homework to do. The claimed 79 older-person social homes needs properly evidencing. A community hub would be much more persuasive with a published, costed business plan. And parking looks a weak place to fight when the transport evidence currently points the other way.

FHDC has more consequential questions to answer.

It needs to establish what the alternative venues can genuinely replace, not merely how many square metres they contain. It needs to explain the absence — if it is indeed absent — of the 12 months’ marketing evidence its own Policy C2 called for. It needs to deal properly with the brand-new HC6 and explain what weight remains with C2. It needs to demonstrate the local need it was specifically told to evidence. And it needs to show that the equality consequences of both creating the homes and losing the community use have genuinely been considered.

None of that means the application must be refused.

It means the eventual decision needs to be bloody well reasoned.

Five affordable homes are valuable. So is a place where people meet, get advice, drink a cup of tea and avoid sitting alone at home. Planning sometimes involves choosing between competing public goods, and there isn’t always a painless answer.

But before one of those public goods disappears for good, FHDC owes Lyminge something rather more convincing than “there are other halls”.

Because, after nearly 50 years of community use, once Everist Court becomes five flats there’s no realistic going back.

And the simplest challenge in all the hundreds of pages of paperwork remains J Dixon’s:

“It could be shared.”

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The Shepway Vox Team

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