Chatham Docks plans on hold for now
Plus Conservatives pick Perfect again, stirring the Reform pot, news in brief, and more
The saga of Chatham Docks has taken another turn, with the plans to redevelop part of the site facing a legal challenge and a threat that the government will step in. Today, we look at what’s been going on and try to understand the Medway Labour administration's position towards the docks. Further down, we have news on the new leadership team for the Conservative opposition in Medway, a new detail on the Reform shop with a drug problem behind it, our news in brief section, and more.
A huge thank you to all of our paid supporters, like Nicola above, who sets out just how stark the local journalism situation has become and why we’re trying to find a different model. If you value our work, please consider upgrading your subscription to ensure we can dedicate more of our time to focus on the kinds of Medway stories you care about.
Chatham Docks plans on hold for now
Proving that if a week is a long time in politics, a fortnight is an eternity, Chatham Docks is back on the agenda again, with a redevelopment plan for part of the site facing two significant legal challenges, putting everything on hold for now.
After Medway Council planning officers recommended the plans for the Basin3 business park on the south side of the side be approved, the item was suddenly pulled from last week’s planning committee due to a ‘legal challenge’.
It turns out that the plans faced not one but two challenges, with Michael Gove’s Department for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities threatening to call in the decision before Medway Council received a second legal challenge.
As it stands, Gove hasn’t directly intervened but has instead declared that he is considering doing so, which effectively freezes the planning process until he decides whether he wants to look more closely or not. There is no clear time frame on how long this might take.
The second legal challenge came from solicitors, arguing that the application had fundamental problems that may make any decision on it illegal. Medway Council is seeking legal advice on how to proceed.
As Medway Council tries to assemble the desperately needed Local Plan, Chatham Docks looks to remain at the centre of the battle. From the council’s point of view, the site represents a significant site for future mixed-use residential development, which will help it meet its future housing needs, and with Peel Ports insistent that the docks will close in the coming years regardless, it seems to fall nicely into place for them.
The problem is that while the site is large, whatever views council officers may or may not have on future development, they can only determine the planning applications they are presented with. The Basin3 development only takes up a small part of the site, retains employment use on it, and opens up improved public access. As a result, it’s hard to argue directly against this particular application, despite threats from existing industrial companies on the site that they will have to leave the area, or even the country, if the plans were to go ahead.
Medway Council, for its part, insists that even the plans being approved wouldn’t necessarily result in that and continues to stress that the main dispute is between Peel Ports and ArcelorMittal, the wire-making company on site that is leading the charge against the plans.
Campaigners have been fighting hard against any form of redevelopment on the site, after owner Peel Ports made it clear that they intend to close the docks and convert the site into a mixed-use residential development. Much of the recent charge has been led by Rochester and Strood MP Kelly Tolhurst, who forced a debate on the issue in parliament and lobbied Gove to examine the decision.
Prior to the local elections last year, Medway Labour were also strongly against the development of the docks, even gaining the support of Keir Starmer in their fight to protect the jobs on the site. In the past year, they have been much quieter on the subject, so we took the opportunity to try and clarify where the party stood by asking Medway Council leader Vince Maple directly, who managed to say nearly 1,000 words while still not leaving us any clearer.
Local Authority: A previous Medway Council opposition and the opposition for Her Majesty’s Government both spoke against the Chatham Docks development. Is this a different Chatham Docks development?
Vince Maple: The question we're looking at today is around the issue of an individual planning application. That was submitted as normal, and has gone through the normal process. Officers look at applications first. Planning applications are dealt with under delegated authority. That's the same for planning committees and planning processes elsewhere. Here in Medway, if planning applications get a certain number of submissions, they'll come to committee. Also, individual councillors can bring them. In this case, the threshold was more than adequately covered. It was due to come to committee on Wednesday. Two things happened.
Firstly, there was an intervention by the Secretary of State's Department for Levelling Up Communities and Housing, DLUHC, as it's known. Basically, that's not unusual in itself. They will often take an approach of saying, ‘We've had an approach. We wish to have a look at this.’ Article 31 is a technical terminology. At the moment, we haven't got an indication as to whether the Secretary of State will call it in or not. We've got a holding position, basically, and we'll obviously wait to see what happens with that. As you would expect, council officers are in touch with civil servants to talk through that process. Again, it's not the first time Medway Council's had that. Alongside that, on bank holiday Saturday, we received a legal letter from solicitors with a number of concerns around the application that was due to be determined on Wednesday. Council officers have looked at that. They are seeking legal advice and guidance. I support them doing that, and looking at that.
I'm not a planning expert. I don't claim to be, but looking at it, I think it's reasonable to say that I expect the advice will be there may need to be minor alterations to the report, but I suspect the substantive report will remain the same. But of course, that's why we're asking for advice. I'm not pre-empting that. Those are the processes. That report will come back and be given due consideration. That will either be approved or refused. Those are the two things that we can do as a local planning authority. In normal cases that would mean because there is no Section 106 agreement, that's the agreement that is normally looked at, particularly for residential properties. That can be sometimes a delay between the committee and an application getting its formal okay. We, at the moment, don't know where we are because of the Secretary of State. At the moment, that's a bit of a vague position from them. That may be clarified in a handful of days. It might take slightly longer. We've, of course, now got this position where the council is seeking legal advice. I would hope as soon as practically possible, that will be seen by the committee. And whether that is the only stage, or whether it then needs to go to the Secretary of State, we should hopefully have more information at that point. This is going to be quite a fluid situation, as you can imagine. If we were talking about this this time last week, we had some indications that there was going to be something from DLUHC, or we'd had some information from DLUHC. We hadn't had the legal challenge at that point. We've had a bank holiday as well. That just complicates things slightly further.
Local Authority: Just to clarify, if we were speaking about this, let's say, 18 months ago, is this the sort of plan that the opposition at the time was against?
Vince Maple: It's worth saying with this plan, and detail is important here, if it was approved, it's only an outline plan. (Arcelor)Mittal could remain on site. That's absolutely possible. By the nature of an outline plan, you don't have the detail as to what buildings will be there, what the structures will be there. One of the differences between 18 months ago and today is that I've taken control of the council with my colleagues, and I was very clear that actually what needed to happen and what the previous administration were failing to do. We inherited a situation where legal letters hadn't been answered for 18 months because the previous administration was just burying their head in the sand. That's not our approach. We want to get on and get stuff done. We brought both parties together with a genuine desire to try and get to a point of a consensus, if that's possible, or an understanding as to what the next step may be if we can't find a consensus. Because I recognise that there are two private sector companies, both of whom have got a fairly entrenched position. But the fact is that they were both willing to come to a meeting, and it was a positive meeting. They had council officers there as well to advise. It was a positive meeting. Further conversations have happened since then, which is, for me, a positive.
We’re thankful to the leader for clearing that up.
Conservatives pick Perfect again
Just two months ago, we wrote about the rapid rise of Conservative councillor George Perfect, who was unanimously selected as deputy leader of their opposition group on Medway Council. Two months on, he’s moved up to become the group leader following the stepping down of Cllr Adrian Gulvin following a year in the role.
Once again, Cllr Perfect has won the role unanimously, demonstrating his level of support within the 20-man Conservative group. Cllr Gary Hackwell, who represents Rainham South East, also selected unanimously, is replacing him as deputy leader.
Cllr Perfect will formally take up the role from tomorrow’s full council meeting, where he will also be joined by his new look shadow cabinet, which features some new faces while some find themselves shuffled out.
Coming in:
Cllr David Brake returns to a frontbench role after holding the health portfolio in the previous administration. This time around, however, he will be without a portfolio.
Cllr Andrew Lawrence will become Shadow Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Community and Housing and will be committee spokesman for regeneration, culture, and environment. He’s been practising for the final part of that brief by posting sceptically about climate change on his Twitter account, including retweeting content calling man-made climate change a “scam” just today.
Cllr Mark Joy will become Shadow Cabinet Member for Children’s Services and Education, adding a new chapter to his political journey that has seen him campaign for the Conservatives, become a UKIP councillor, quit within weeks to sit as an independent, campaign for Sadiq Khan while trying to join Labour, rejoin the Conservatives, get deselected by the Conservatives in 2019, only to be elected as a Conservative councillor once again in 2023. What a ride.
On the way out:
Cllr Adrian Gulvin, who took on the role of group leader to be a safe pair of hands following the loss of the Conservatives in Medway last year. He’s recently been on medical leave and isn’t planning to stand again in 2027, so he seems happy to return to the backbenches.
Cllr Gary Etheridge, long-time independently minded councillor for Strood Rural, has been shunted off his planning brief. It’s notable that Cllr Etheridge was a close ally of Cllr Elizabeth Turpin, a fellow Strood Rural councillor who recently quit the Conservatives to join the Independent Group. Could Cllr Etheridge make the same journey?
It will be interesting to see how the new Conservative group on Medway Council performs on the way to the 2027 local elections. The group under Cllr Gulvin seemed to sometimes lack direction, becoming bogged down in relatively small local issues rather than any grander ambitions. Cllr Perfect represents a new style of leadership for the group from an entirely different generation, and it will be curious as to how much he will be able to direct his group into a coherent fighting force once again.
Stirring the Reform pot
Shout out to KentOnline for picking up on our story last week about the Reform UK shop in Strood being at the centre of a drug raid. We published it while the local candidate for the party was questioning whether it had even happened.
As we said at the time, if Reform is indeed only leasing the outside of the shop for advertising, they, of course, are not responsible for what goes on inside.
Still, the KentOnline report did have one nugget of information that we didn’t have when we published last week:
The shop windows are being used to campaign for Reform UK, however, it is understood it has no involvement in the premises itself. The building owner Bill Khatkar told KentOnline he was leasing the property to a business but sold the advertising space outside separately.
Surely, building owner Bill Khatkar isn’t the same Bill Khatkar who stood as a Reform candidate in last year’s local elections?
So, despite a Reform candidate owning the building and Reform leasing the outside space for advertising, no one from Reform had any idea what was going on inside.
Good thing they aren’t looking to be in charge of a country or anything.
In brief
⚫ Medway Council’s Director of Public Health, James Williams, has passed away. He had been in the role since 2017 and steered Medway through the COVID-19 pandemic, bringing some of the first testing centres in the country to our towns.
🚗 Red routes will launch in Medway next week, with cameras going live on Monday 20 May. Anyone not parking illegally doesn’t have anything to worry about.
🏗️ Donard Homes has requested a screening opinion from Medway Council for a 350-home development at Bardell Wharf in Rochester. This is a return to square one for the site at the bottom of Star Hill, which had a scheme for 374 apartments approved last year.
🌍 MidKent College has been placed in the top ten colleges nationwide for its green initiatives. Colleges across the country have been competing in the Planet Earth Games with students pioneering sustainability events, and MidKent College came 8th overall.
More Authority
We had a really good response over the weekend to our interview with Medway’s Caitlin Webb, who was the first Local Democracy Reporter in the UK with the unenviable task of covering all of Kent. LDRs are a vital yet somewhat controversial addition to the media landscape and our conversation with Caitlin explored exactly what the role entails and separating your personal beliefs from reporting.
"That's the power of having someone in the room"
Our Sunday interviews are exclusive to our paid supporters, so please consider upgrading your subscription if you’d like to receive them.
Footnotes
If you enjoy Local Authority, please share it with your friends, family, associates, and even your enemies. We have no meaningful marketing budget, so rely on word of mouth from our readers to find new readers. You can even get some sweet, sweet rewards for sending new readers our way. Details here.
Music that soundtracked the creation of this edition: Slurpt by Ace Bushy Striptease, It Must Be Grubs by Grubs, and Dedicated by Carly Rae Jepsen.
Peel ports have always said they cannot afford lock repairs so it was going to close the docks. Most company's would have covered this with depreciation charges in there accounts, but if you realise it's worth so much more if you close it, why bother. Similar things seem to be happening at a ferry port in Ardrossan and the Inchgreen dry dock in Scotland. If you do not put money aside for repairs, you can also increase dividends from £38.9 million to £88,9 million last year, and pay the main man £22 million pounds where he can enjoy it tax free on the Isle of Man.