00:00Speak to anyone in Raynham and the chance is they might talk to you about the increase in new homes being built in the area.
00:07Now plans for 750 homes on these orchards have been proposed, which led to a recent protest at the first consultation event for the development.
00:17It is surrounded in part by other houses and by small country lanes either side.
00:22It's a small area, a green buffer between Raynham and Twiddle.
00:27And once that's gone, it will feel like all of those towns moved together and it will highly impact the air quality of the local area and the infrastructure and the road networks.
00:39It's not the first time the campaign group has protested against this.
00:43Similar proposals for more than 1,200 homes were brought forward more than five years ago.
00:49At the time, Medway Council opposed a plan, refusing the application, which was upheld at an appeal.
00:54But now these fields are earmarked in the authority's next local plan.
00:59That's the blueprint for where new homes will be built for the next generation.
01:04I'm shocked, I'm disappointed, I'm dismayed that the local authority now want to, you know, build these houses here again,
01:12having had a previous inspector, you know, where Medway Council gave evidence to say the proposals for the 1,200 houses were unsustainable.
01:20So I'm shocked, disappointed, dismayed, but I want the local authority to do the right thing, to say, look, stand by what they said before.
01:29Building in this area, with the lack of infrastructure, is unsustainable.
01:34If you compare satellite images from 10 years ago to today, you can clearly see an increase in new developments.
01:41And here you can see where the proposed location is for these new homes.
01:48But if it's not housing residents are concerned about in Raynham, well, you'll probably hear them talking about traffic.
01:55Some are worried that these 750 homes will only make things worse.
02:00I'm a taxi driver. I've gone from the Strand to the bottom of Bering Grove Lane where I live.
02:07It's taken me an hour and a half to get home for a six, seven minute journey.
02:12How can that be right? And now they want to carry on building more and more houses.
02:16Unless we invest in the infrastructure first and then build the houses, we can't just keep building.
02:21Now, these are only proposals and it's understood the plans for the 750 homes in these orchards won't be submitted to go through the planning process until Medway Council gets their local plan signed off.
02:36It's understood that will happen at some point next year.
