Science Park will be like new town

My brother has alerted me to the proposed plans to extend the science park at Woodstock.

I was brought up and went to school in Sittingbourne and my mother still lives in the town. Each time I return to visit, it is more built up with roads and more traffic.

From what I understand from the feature in your paper of September 8, the plans of Kent Science Park  amount to the development of practically a new town in the beautiful countryside between Sittingbourne and the M2.

How can the developers be so naïve as to claim that their plans will be such benefit to Sittingbourne?

More companies, regardless of being “science-led”, more busy roads, houses and attendant services will bring thousands of people and their cars into an already congested area.

Once the road links are in place it will be only a matter of time before more and more fields are swallowed up in housing. Villages and the countryside of the south east are at premium. They must not be allowed to disappear in urban development. Offering a “country park” and “ neighbourhood centres” is no consolation to the village communities threatened by these terrible proposals.

At an envisaged 30,000 people this development would be bigger than the Sittingbourne in which I grew up. This is no place for a new town on its doorstep.

Babrara M Stewart
High Bickington, Umberleigh,
North Devon.