Folkestone & Hythe Local Plan Puts District’s Future on Rails
Folkestone & Hythe District Council has fired the starting gun on a new Local Plan that could shape the district until 2045. No sites have been chosen yet. No final [...]
Planning
The Long Read: South Brooks Solar Farm Consultation Opens as Romney Marsh Drainage Fight Deepens
EDF power solutions UK and PS Renewables say South Brooks Solar Farm could power more than 140,000 homes a year. Campaigners say residents are being asked how to soften the [...]
Martello Lakes Pool Promise Replaced by Hythe Leisure Plan
Scrutiny councillors backed further work on Martello Lakes and Hythe Pool, but the message was clear: no token container, no unaffordable racket-sport vanity project, and no [...]
The Long Read: Martello Lakes Pool Promise: Where the £5.5m S106 Money Went
Folkestone & Hythe’s own papers show the Martello Lakes swimming pool dream has vanished. The money has gone elsewhere, the land decision is still coming, and the [...]
Folkestone Folca 1 Flats Approved as Council-Owned Building Sale Questions Remain
Folkestone’s former Debenhams has taken another step out of limbo. On Tuesday evening, Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s Planning and Licensing Committee approved [...]
Saga’s Enbrook Homes Plan Revives Folkestone Redevelopment Row
Saga says homes on “under-utilised” land at Enbrook Park could help fund the repair of The Pavilion and keep the Sandgate headquarters sustainable. But this is not [...]
Folkestone Folca 1 Flats Plan: Planning Law and Noise Risks
Folca 1 is heading towards retail and flats, not the medical centre once promised. But this isn’t a normal planning application. It’s a narrow Class MA prior approval [...]
Folkestone Silver Spring Site: Channex and the BVI Trail Behind Aldi, Burger King and Costa
Aldi, Burger King and Costa are heading for the old Silver Spring site. But behind the shiny signs and paper cups sits a corporate trail running from Folkestone to Purley, [...]
Otterpool Park Update: £24m Paid Out, Sewage Works Approved, Delivery Questions Remain
Before a single Otterpool Park home has been built, Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s own payment data shows nearly £24m in Otterpool equity, share-capital and [...]
Stodmarsh Nutrient Credits: Will Kent’s New Pollution Offset Market Unlock Homes or Just Sell Clean-River Promises?
For years, Stodmarsh has been the wetland that stopped the bulldozers. Now councils and private firms say nutrient credits can unlock thousands of homes. That may be [...]
New Folkestone Society Chair Matthew Jones on Heritage, Regeneration and Folkestone’s Future
A conversation with Matthew Jones, Chair of the New Folkestone Society, with Tony Quarrington also joining the discussion, on Folkestone’s past, present and future — from [...]
Exclusive: How Otterpool Park’s Places for People Deal Ended in a Claim
David Monk’s Otterpool strategy was built on a simple commercial idea: service the land, parcel it up and sell it on. By 2023, Places for People had emerged in public as [...]
Otterpool Park Minutes Reveal Places for People Claim
For years, Otterpool Park LLP’s public minutes were written in that familiar regeneration dialect: lots of “delivery”, “collaboration” and “transition”, not [...]
Planning Reform Plans Shift Most Planning Decisions From Councillors to Officers
If the government’s planning committee reforms go through, the biggest change will not simply be that fewer applications reach committee. It will be that a new two-person [...]
Sandbanks Littlestone Development: Ownership, Planning and Company Questions
We have written about Sandbanks before. Back in 2021 the questions were about planning, ownership and who was really driving the scheme. Five years on, the former care home [...]
New Beach Holiday Village: Jersey Ownership and US Governance Questions Behind Dymchurch Plan
Folkestone & Hythe District Council has approved planning application 25/2297/FH for New Beach Holiday Village in Dymchurch as a greener, smarter revamp. But behind the [...]
Folkestone & Hythe Planning Committee Faces Whitehall Power Grab
If you want to understand where power is drifting in local planning, do not just watch the next controversial application land on Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s [...]
Romney Marsh Solar Farm Approved 8–4: What Folkestone & Hythe Councillors Were Told, What the Papers Contradict, and What Happens Next (25/0542/FH)
Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s Planning and Licensing Committee has approved planning application 25/0542/FH for a 40-hectare (98.8-acre) solar farm on land [...]
Lidl Folkestone Planning Application 26/0002/FH: Health, Highway Safety and Contamination — The Evidence Behind the Objections
A planning application is supposed to be a tidy exercise: drawings, reports, consultations, decision. Planning committees like certainty. Communities like clarity. Developers [...]
Otterpool Park’s 1001-Day Section 106 Delay Exposes England’s Planning Logjam
On 4 April 2023, Folkestone & Hythe’s Planning and Licensing Committee resolved to grant outline planning permission for Otterpool Park—a new garden town proposed at [...]
Draft NPPF 2025 Explained: What’s Changed Since 2024 and What It Means for Planning Decisions, Housing Numbers and the Green Belt
Yes — we know you love it. We know you wanted it under the Christmas tree. And the Government, in the spirit of festive excess, has delivered: a brand-new Draft National [...]
Belgian Developer Hendrik Danneels: Criminal Tax-Fraud and Money-Laundering Case Shadowing Mylecke NV and the Insolvent Leas Pavilion Development in Folkestone
For years, Belgian property developer Hendrik Danneels (pictured) has preferred to operate in the shadows. Belgian business press portrays him as a low-profile coastal [...]
Folkestone & Hythe s106 Breach at Sandgate Pavilions: Stoneleigh House Link Not Secured—14 Affordable Homes Lost
On 3 May 2016, Folkestone & Hythe’s Tory controlled Planning Committee approved Sandgate Pavilions (owned by a David Pownceby Company) (Y15/1154/SH) subject to a [...]
Stoneleigh House and the £1.716m Question: Where Did the Affordable Homes Go?
Updated: 09:35 on 3 Nov 2025 A fire-damaged Stoneleigh House on Tram Road, Folkestone, goes to auction this month with its 2018 consent for 14 affordable flats long since [...]
Lidl Folkestone Plan Faces Mixed Reaction and Ownership Questions
Discount supermarket Lidl has unveiled proposals to relocate its Folkestone town-centre store (in Shellons Street – which has long been planned to become the new bus [...]