Reserved matters: sports ground and pavilion

Comments on MC/26/1646, the design and layout of the pitches, courts and pavilion under condition 41, closed on 24 September 2026. Medway’s register records twenty-two comments, all of them objections, eleven of them filed in the last week before it closed. Medway has not decided it. Its own target date is 23 October 2026, which is earlier than its 2 November target for MC/26/1467, the reserved matters that fix the layout those details depend on. MC/26/1722 and MC/26/1723 are the next to close, on 1 October.

The group filed its objection to MC/26/1646 with Medway on 7 September 2026, addressed to the case officer and copied to the Head of Development Management, the parish council and the three ward councillors. It runs to eight grounds. The central one is arithmetic. The Inspector allowed the loss of the APCM recreation ground because the replacement would be two football pitches, a cricket pitch, three tennis courts, three cricket nets and a new pavilion housing two changing rooms, which he found would go over and above what exists. The applicant’s own planning statement offers two hard tennis courts and no cricket nets. The pavilion has been designed, but that drawing sits on MC/26/1467 and forms no part of this application, so the pavilion detail condition 41 requires is not before the council at all. The group asks Medway to refuse the application, or to hold it undetermined until the missing detail, Sport England’s response and the ground condition and drainage approvals are in place. Residents can still comment in their own words until 24 September.

MC/26/1646 was received and validated on 28 August 2026. It asks Medway to approve the design and layout of the pitches, courts and pavilion under condition 41 of the appeal decision — the replacement for the APCM Cliffe Recreation Ground. Two documents are on the council’s file: an application form and a single site plan. Consultation opened on 3 September and closes on 24 September 2026 and as at 4 September the file recorded no public comments on it at all. It runs alongside MC/26/1467, the reserved matters for the same phase, which Medway has not yet determined.