What is being built around Cliffe and Cliffe Woods

Details submitted to discharge condition 32. As amended, condition 32 bars development in any phase or sub-phase, highway works excepted, until it is approved — so approving it removes that bar. It is the application the group considers most important. The applicant’s own Phase 2 investigation states that shallow soakaways into the Seaford Chalk Formation would not be a viable option for disposing of surface water, and Medway’s own Strategic Flood Risk Assessment records that the ditches across Cliffe Marshes drain into the Thames. The open question is where the surface water actually goes, and whether that route reaches the protected wetland.

• The route surface water takes off the site
• A possible pathway to the Thames Estuary and Marshes Ramsar site
• The legal bar that currently stops the phase proceeding

Comments close 4 September 2026

Detailed approval for the housing phase. Condition 1 as amended requires reserved matters approval for each phase or sub-phase, highway works excepted, before any development takes place. This is not a paperwork exercise: it is the decision by which the housing phase becomes capable of proceeding.

• Layout, scale, appearance and landscaping of 250 homes

Comments close 8 September 2026

Details submitted to discharge the remediation conditions. Both bar development, so discharging them removes those bars. The Phase 2 Geo-Environmental Investigation submitted with it is the source of the proximity figures on this page — the applicant’s own consultant, not an objector.

• Whether the remediation strategy answers what conditions 22 and 23 require
• A Nitrate Vulnerable Zone recorded on the site itself

Detailed approval for the community hub phase, under the same condition 1 requirement as the housing.

• What the promised community hub actually turns out to be

Comments close 8 September 2026

Detailed approval for the replacement sports ground and pavilion. It also fixes the layout to which conditions 40 and 41 attach — which makes it the application that decides what the village actually gets in place of the APCM recreation ground.

• The replacement for the APCM Cliffe Recreation Ground
• Access to and suitability of the relocated sports ground

Comments close 8 September 2026

Outline application for up to 100 dwellings on a 5.2 hectare site south of Higham Road and east of Buckland Road, immediately beside the Eternal Lake Nature Reserve, with access from Higham Road. A quarter of the homes would be affordable; the mix runs from thirteen apartments to twenty-six four-bedroom houses. Received 5 February 2026, 142 comments lodged, seven recorded constraints. Officers acknowledge that Medway cannot demonstrate a five-year supply of housing land — the developer’s central argument — but recommend refusal anyway, on the grounds that the harm to the rural character of the area is unacceptable. It goes to committee on 26 August 2026.

• Land right beside the Eternal Lake Nature Reserve
• A working pear orchard and best and most versatile agricultural land
• A new access onto Higham Road

Outline permission for up to 225 dwellings. Refused by Medway when it first came forward in 2016, then allowed following the developer’s appeal, with a further outline permission in 2019. Objections at the time turned on school places, GP capacity, transport, and the loss of around 10.9 hectares of productive agricultural land. Now being built.

• Around 10.9 hectares of productive agricultural land
• School places and GP capacity across both villages

Sixty-eight dwellings including affordable housing, with parking, landscaping, open space, drainage and earthworks, and a new access formed from View Road. Permission granted and being built out — conditions on biodiversity net gain and play equipment were discharged through 2025.

• Construction traffic routed through Town Road

The parish council’s tracker lists a Town Road scheme separately from Oakleigh Fields. The council’s own file shows they are the same thing: MC/21/1287 is the reserved matters approval under MC/19/0287, the 225-dwelling outline permission, at Land at Town Road. Later variations changed the landscaping (a pond replaced with a small orchard), reconfigured the affordable homes, and added three more market dwellings. Listed here so the two names are not mistaken for two developments — it adds no homes of its own to the totals.

• Frontage onto the recreation ground

Outline permission for up to 250 homes, a mixed-use community hub and a replacement sports ground and pavilion, with accesses from Church Street, Cooling Road and Buttway Lane. Medway refused it unanimously in October 2022; the council then withdrew from the inquiry after the developer’s legal team indicated it would seek around £100,000 in costs, and the Inspector allowed the appeal on 28 November 2023 with 54 conditions. Non-material amendment MC/24/0750, dated 3 May 2024, amended conditions 1, 7, 9, 10, 21, 22, 26, 32, 34 and 54 and no others. A section 106 agreement dated 2 June 2023 sits alongside it. The principle of development is settled and closed — which is exactly why the fight is now about the five applications above.

• The APCM Cliffe Recreation Ground
• Arable land on both sides of the village
• Church Street, Cooling Road and Buttway Lane as the only ways in and out

Twenty-five dwellings with landscaping, parking, earthworks and a new vehicular access from View Road, on the same land as the 68. Permission granted: conditions on ancient woodland buffer, habitat creation, ecological mitigation and landscaping were all discharged during 2025. The site was previously put forward for fifty retirement homes.

• An ancient woodland buffer on the site
• A second Esquire scheme on the same field

Outline permission for 50 retirement homes — a mix of two and three storey apartments and single storey bungalows with a meeting room, gymnasium, office and parking, and a new access to View Road. Medway refused it; the developer appealed and it was allowed under APP/A2280/W/18/3202264. The reserved matters that followed were the ones councillors threw out as out of character, the round compared in coverage to army barracks, and a further reserved matters application was decided in 2021. The same land later came forward as the 25 dwellings under MC/24/0279 — whether that supersedes this permission still needs confirming, so no homes are counted here to avoid double-counting.

• A precedent for scale and design on the edge of the village

Forty-four dwellings, a quarter of them affordable, with access, public open space and landscaping. Permission granted; conditions on air quality and construction environmental management were still being discharged in 2026. The parish council’s tracker lists this as 45 — the council’s own file says 44.

• Another 44 homes on the Buckland Road side of the village

The village recreation ground, sold to Trenport in 2001 and now inside the development site. Residents had it listed as an Asset of Community Value in 2022, which triggered a moratorium during which it could only be sold to a community interest group. That moratorium ran to 18 June 2026 and has now expired, so the owner is free to sell on the open market. The group has submitted a bid to buy it. Separately it is assembling the evidence on Medway’s historic and current property interest — a deed dated 17 January 1975 and a licence dated 6 February 1975, and whether a statutory trust or public open space status arises — along with a historical document said to show the field was left to the village in 1972. Public use is already well evidenced; the legal character of the council’s interest is not.

• A recreation ground used by several sports clubs
• Whether a statutory trust over public open space survives

The marshes north and west of the village are the Thames Estuary and Marshes Ramsar site and Special Protection Area, with the South Thames Estuary and Marshes SSSI alongside. The applicant’s own Phase 2 investigation puts the Ramsar site 6 metres south and west of the development site, the SSSI and the SPA 7 metres, the nearest surface-water feature 6 metres west of Plot 1, records a Nitrate Vulnerable Zone on the site itself, and gives the North Kent Medway Chalk groundwater a Water Framework Directive status of Poor.

• Internationally protected wetland and the birds that use it
• The RSPB Cliffe Pools reserve on the village’s doorstep
• Groundwater already classified as Poor