Condition 41: the pitches, courts and pavilion

Six pages, in plain English. Comments on MC/26/1646, the replacement recreation ground, closed on 24 September with twenty-two objections on Medway’s file, eleven of them filed in the last week. A seventh application on the Church Street land, MC/26/1809, was validated on 21 September and closes on 14 October. Medway discharged condition 15 at Buckland Road on 22 September. Six applications close on 1 and 2 October. The answer the committee asked Medway for on the drainage decision is due by 30 September.

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.

Comments on MC/26/1542, the remediation scheme under conditions 20 to 23, closed on 16 September 2026. Medway has not yet decided it. Its own target date is 8 October 2026. MC/26/1646, the pitches, courts and pavilion, is the next, on 24 September.

The applicant’s own Utilities Assessment, filed with MC/22/0254 in February 2022 and put before the Inspector at the appeal as core document CD1-15, records a high voltage overhead line crossing the site at the location of the proposed playing fields, running from pole 712400 at the rear of ‘Rectory’ on Church Street and states that it is to be left where it is. The site plan Medway is being asked to approve under condition 41 shows no line, no pole, no easement and no clearance. The group raised the same point in its Objection Addendum of 11 October 2022, which called the presence of a 33kV overhead cable over a public sports field untenable. The appeal decision later recorded, at paragraph 63, that the existing overhead cables would be removed and redirected underground. The group filed a supplementary objection on this single ground on 8 September 2026, to be read with its objection of 7 September. It asks Medway to require a drawing plotting every overhead line and pole with its voltage against the proposed layout, to obtain UK Power Networks’ written position on the layout now proposed rather than on the illustrative one the operator commented on in August 2021 and to put the question to Sport England. Separately the group is writing to UK Power Networks direct, because the operator has never been asked about this layout and its answer is the one that matters. Neither the operating voltage nor how many lines cross the ground can be established from the documents on the council’s file. Comments on MC/26/1646 close on 24 September.

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.