Otterpool Park: £500m at Stake — and No Meetings on the S106 Financial Package

There are two numbers worth remembering when looking at Otterpool Park: £250 million and more than £500 million. The first is our best estimate of the potential value of the Section 106 planning obligations. The second is the scale the wider infrastructure-and-obligations burden reaches when the historic evidence is brought broadly into 2026 money. Neither is the current agreed bill. Both explain why what is happening to the Otterpool deal now matters so much.

The April 2023 draft Heads of Terms never gives residents one convenient total. Instead, the costs are scattered across 19 pages of schools, roads, public transport, waste, community facilities, social care, heritage, biodiversity and long-term stewardship. Some are cash contributions. Others require land, buildings, infrastructure or services to be handed over or delivered directly. Adding only the amounts carrying a pound sign therefore produces a seriously incomplete answer.

Education is where the scale first becomes obvious. Seven primary schools were priced at £10.6m each plus indexation — £74.2m before inflation — with the land transferred to Kent County Council at nil cost. Secondary provision envisages sites for an 8FE and a 6FE school, with a new-build rate of £27,935.96 per place. The package also includes 471 sixth-form places and 80 SEND places, the latter priced at £50,893.35 each. Depending on how much secondary capacity is ultimately funded, that element alone could add roughly £58m–£72m before indexation.

Then the smaller-looking figures begin to pile up: up to £2.676m for off-site public-rights-of-way improvements, £840,000 for bus services, £1.653m for waste facilities and £5.9m across libraries, community learning, Early Help and social-care/community space. Two archaeology posts add another £750,000. And the £500 sustainable-travel voucher promised for every dwelling would cost £4.25m across 8,500 homes.

On the obligations we can sensibly price, that gets us to roughly £165m–£180m in base-price terms. Broadly allowing for subsequent construction-cost inflation takes the quantifiable element towards £200m. But that should be treated as a floor, not the final cost.

Why? Because the draft puts no price beside some of the potentially largest commitments: works at M20 Junctions 9, 10, 10a, 11, 12 and 13; A20 dualling and other highway schemes; Westenhanger station; pedestrian and cycling infrastructure; a health facility capable of serving around 25,000 patients; a 60-bed care home; leisure provision; country parks; biodiversity mitigation; long-term stewardship; professional costs and substantial transfers of serviced land. Allowing sensibly for those unpriced obligations is why we currently put the old S106 package somewhere around £225m–£275m, with about £250m as a reasonable central estimate.

There is also an enormous obligation we have deliberately left out of that estimate: 22% affordable housing, potentially 1,870 homes. Its economic value depends on tenure, grant, transfer values and the financial model. Giving it a convenient cash price without those figures would be pretending to know something we do not.

Then an independent figure appears

At the Highsted Park planning inquiry, Strutt & Parker’s viability expert used Otterpool as a local comparator. His evidence states that Otterpool’s “infrastructure cost is approximately £36,500 per unit on a scheme of 8,500 homes.” In 2025 prices that equals £310.25m. The same evidence also records Otterpool’s 22% affordable-housing requirement.

But that £310.25m is a 2025 figure. The RICS/BCIS CIL Index rises from 391 in 2025 to 400 in 2026, an increase of about 2.3%. Using that only as a broad inflation proxy lifts Strutt & Parker’s Otterpool comparator to approximately £37,340 per home, or £317.4m across 8,500 homes in 2026 money.

That is a remarkably useful reality check, because Otterpool’s older modelling independently landed in almost exactly the same place. Earlier public evidence contained approximately £287m of infrastructure construction costs plus another £27.33m of infrastructure risk — roughly £314m combined. One figure came from Otterpool’s own historic model; another came years later from an independent viability expert using Otterpool as a comparator at a different planning inquiry. Both point to infrastructure costs around the £310m-plus mark before the separate S106 burden is considered.

And that distinction matters.

The older Otterpool appraisal separately allowed £127.5m for Section 106 costs. Put that beside infrastructure of roughly £310m and the historic scheme was already carrying something approaching £440m before later inflation. Once those historic numbers are viewed in current-money terms, a wider infrastructure-and-obligations burden exceeding £500m is not sensational arithmetic. It is where the published evidence leads.

The numbers have now been rewritten

FHDC and Homes England have since recorded that the proposed infrastructure was “fully reviewed with potential cost savings identified to improve the financial viability of the project.” Crucially, the same record says some of those savings require changes to the approved S106 Heads of Terms and that “Itemised Baseline, Better Case and Best Case cost plans have been prepared” and used in the financial modelling.

Those are the numbers which matter now.

But KCC’s position introduces a significant complication. Asked for formal officer or project meetings since September 2025 at which the Otterpool S106 financial package had been substantively considered, the county council said:

“There have been no meetings on the S106 financial package. KCC would expect to be consulted on any revised S106 schedule by the Local Planning Authority (LPA) if and when available.”

Yet Cllr Jim Martin’s published portfolio report to Full Council on 24 June 2026 says he was continuing to meet regularly with KCC, alongside Homes England and others involved with Otterpool. In the same Otterpool update he reported that FHDC was “making good progress with KCC in agreeing the Section 106 Agreement” and expected that progress to continue.

Taken at face value, those two accounts pull in opposite directions. FHDC publicly reported regular contact with KCC and “good progress” in agreeing the Section 106 Agreement, while KCC says there were “no meetings on the S106 financial package” during the period requested. If both statements are accurate, the obvious question is what discussions were actually taking place, in what form, and how an agreement involving potentially hundreds of millions of pounds could be progressing without meetings on its financial package.

That is difficult to ignore when set against what has happened elsewhere in the project.

The scheme has moved again. Updated information was submitted on 6 October 2026, and the latest delivery material proposes two S106 agreements — one covering the Early Homes Parcel  – Hillhurst Scheme – and another covering the wider Otterpool site — with the stated aim of ensuring contributions and infrastructure are “proportionate and appropriate”.

So on one side we have new financial modelling, infrastructure cost savings and Baseline, Better Case and Best Case plans. On the other, KCC says there have been “no meetings on the S106 financial package” and that it expects to be consulted on a revised schedule “if and when available.”

That makes Otterpool’s central financial question even more important.

It is no longer whether the old package was expensive. We know it was.

The question is what disappeared between the old deal and the new one.

If a road has been dropped, that has a value. If a school contribution has been reduced, that has a value. If infrastructure has been pushed further into the future, that has a value. And if something once expected from the developer is now to be paid for by Homes England, central government or another public body, that has a value too.

That is why the Baseline, Better Case and Best Case plans should be public.

Because viability does not make a cost disappear. It only decides who carries it.

Until those figures are disclosed, residents cannot see whether Otterpool has been made cheaper by genuine efficiency, by postponing infrastructure, by reducing obligations, or by moving part of a bill potentially worth hundreds of millions of pounds from the developer onto the public purse.

Nor can they yet see how a revised S106 package has reached the point where two agreements are now proposed, while KCC says it is still expecting consultation on any revised S106 schedule “if and when available.” Response (all information to be…

And if that is the bargain being struck to make Otterpool happen, the public should see the price before the deal is done — not after it is too late to change it.

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent is NOT a Crime