Folkestone & Hythe Local Plan 2045 Consultation: 15,600 Homes and More Development Sites Likely
Folkestone & Hythe may need to plan for around 15,600 new homes between now and 2045, according to documents published as the district council begins preparing its new Local Plan.
That’s the figure FHDC itself has put on the scale of growth now facing the district. Central government’s current calculation stands at 820 homes a year, and the council says that means “around 15,600 new homes” may need to be planned for by 2045.
There is, though, a rather sizeable problem.
Over the latest five years for which Kent County Council has verified figures, Folkestone & Hythe delivered 2,087 net new homes — an average of about 417 a year. Annual completions were 489 in 2020/21, 454 in 2021/22, another 454 in 2022/23, 365 in 2023/24 and just 325 in 2024/25.
So the new 820-a-year figure is almost double — 96.5% higher than — the district’s recent five-year average.
It isn’t a fair comparison to say FHDC previously “failed” to build 820 homes annually, because that wasn’t the requirement during those years. But it does show the scale of the shift. To sustain 820 completions a year would require housebuilding to run at roughly twice the pace achieved across the latest five measured years.
And Folkestone & Hythe isn’t starting from scratch.
Otterpool Park is already embedded in the existing Core Strategy Review. FHDC’s new consultation document explicitly says the garden settlement “will count towards the housing target we need to meet”. Existing Local Plan allocations which haven’t yet been built, together with other sites subsequently receiving permission, can also contribute towards the 15,600 figure.
That settles one important point: Otterpool’s proposed 8,500 homes shouldn’t simply be added to the 15,600 to create a 24,100-home target.
But the next sentence is arguably more significant.
Despite Otterpool, existing allocations and other planning permissions, FHDC says “we are likely to need additional development sites”. The new Local Plan will therefore have to decide not simply how much development is required, but where the additional land needed to accommodate it should be found.
Residents won’t yet find those sites in the consultation launched yesterday, 7 September 2026. FHDC expressly says this opening stage contains no proposed development sites and that they’ll appear in future consultations as the Local Plan develops over the next two years. The plan will eventually allocate land for housing, employment and community needs.
The search for possible land, however, started well before this week.
FHDC’s October 2024 Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment methodology says the council was already running a “call for sites”, inviting developers, agents, landowners, organisations and individuals to submit land for consideration in the next Local Plan. A HELAA doesn’t itself allocate land, but it identifies and assesses sites which might potentially meet future development requirements.
Those assessments are fairly forensic.
Potential sites are examined for highway access and capacity, water and foul-sewer connections, electricity, contamination, ground conditions, flooding and difficult topography. FHDC also proposes testing possible effects on townscape, landscape, agricultural land, heritage, biodiversity and the Kent Downs National Landscape
Proximity to everyday services also matters. The methodology asks whether land lies within 400 metres, described as “desirable”, or 800 metres, described as “acceptable”, of a bus stop or railway station, primary school and convenience shop, and within 1km of a GP surgery.
That doesn’t mean land close to a railway station or school will automatically be developed. But given what Policy S5 of the NPPF says about the location of new development, readers can draw their own conclusions. What FHDC’s methodology does make clear is that well-connected sites are likely to perform strongly when the council begins weighing one potential development site against another.
Then there is the infrastructure needed to make another 15,600 homes work.
FHDC identifies schools, healthcare, transport, water and sewerage systems, flood defences, energy and digital connectivity among the issues growth will have to address. The council says one of the key challenges will be ensuring that homes, jobs, services and infrastructure are planned together rather than development arriving first and facilities playing catch-up afterwards.
There is also a separate environmental route into the process. FHDC’s Strategic Environmental Assessment consultation asks whether its baseline evidence is sufficiently “robust and comprehensive”, whether important sustainability issues have been missed and whether its eventual options and reasonable alternatives are being tested properly.
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