Kent Science Park protest march
26 Feb 2007
A group dedicated to saving some of north Kent’s finest countryside will take to the streets of Sittingbourne this Saturday (3 March). The Five Parishes Opposition Group, which is fighting plans to expand the Kent Science Park, will march through the town centre from 10 am before delivering a petition to Swale Borough Council leader Andrew Bowles.
The owners of the existing Science Park are planning to expand with a new road to the M2, which they say will require funding from thousands of new houses. The business expansion and the new homes, as well as the road itself, would all be built on greenfield land.
‘Our group represents the five rural parishes and 3,000 people threatened with a mass of house building which will contribute nothing to the economy or the community,’ said the Five Parishes Group’s Monique Bonney. ‘We wholeheartedly support the generation of high-quality, science-based jobs in Sittingbourne. However, a new road from the M2, funded by hundreds of acres of greenfield housing, will not help to provide this.
‘There are many eminently suitable sites for scientific employment in town and to the north of Sittingbourne, related to the existing and proposed business estates which have excellent road links already, without the need to carve new routes through the countryside,’ she said. ‘The 4,500-plus houses the landowner wants to use as a cash cow will take the borough council’s housing allocation way above its required level, with almost zero benefit to Sittingbourne. New residents near the Science Park would find it easier to drive to Hempstead Valley Shopping Centre, for instance, than to use Sittingbourne town centre.’
Ms Bonney also cast grave doubt on the developer’s grandiose promises of job creation. ‘The scheme’s promoters have repeatedly claimed that thousands of high-quality jobs stand to be created if only they are allowed to build on our countryside,’ she said. ‘Yet there is no evidence, on the Science Park’s past performance, that this would be the case. At the moment, only 15% of people working at the Park are employed in science-type businesses, and one in four of the 800 employees work at a call centre. We have every reason to fear that if we drop our guard and see our green fields disappear beneath Tarmac and concrete, we will only get a rash of low-grade commercial development in return.’
Ms Bonney’s concerns for the north Kent countryside were echoed by the county branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. Director Dr Hilary Newport said: ‘Quality countryside is in desperately short supply already in north Kent, and relentless pressure threatens to build it out of existence. When a proposal offers nothing of real benefit but threatens so much damage to our natural environment, it must be refused. For the landowner this promises to be hugely profitable,’ she said. ‘For everyone else, and especially for rural Kent, it would be a disaster.’
The protest march will begin at 10 am outside the old Co-op department store at the top of Sittingbourne High Street. It will end outside the cinema, opposite Swale House, where a petition will be presented to Andrew Bowles, Leader of Swale Borough Council. The petition has already been signed by over 3,000 people.
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