Condition 15: the travel plan

Four pages, in plain English. Medway discharged conditions 20 to 23 on MC/26/1542 on 8 October for the whole site. Its decision letter relies on a specialist consultation response that has not been published. Objections on MC/26/1719 to MC/26/1724 rose from forty-five on 2 October to seventy-three on 9 October. None of the six has been decided; Medway’s own target dates are 2 and 3 November. MC/26/1809 is open until 14 October.

Five pages, in plain English. The six applications validated on 7 and 8 September, MC/26/1719 to MC/26/1724, closed on 1 and 2 October with forty-five objections between them on Medway’s file. None has been decided; Medway’s own target dates are 2 and 3 November. The parish council’s response on the travel plan is on the file. MC/26/1809 is the one application on the Church Street land still open, until 14 October. Medway refused three homes at Westfield, Town Road, on 24 September.

Medway’s consultation periods on MC/26/1722 and MC/26/1723 ended on 1 October 2026 and on MC/26/1719, MC/26/1720, MC/26/1721 and MC/26/1724 on 2 October 2026. On 2 October Medway’s register recorded forty-five comments across the six, all of them objections: nine on MC/26/1722, eight on MC/26/1723 and seven on each of the other four. None had been decided. Medway’s own target dates for deciding them are 2 and 3 November 2026. A comment can still count while an application is undecided. MC/26/1809, the Town Road signage under condition 13, is open until 14 October.

Five pages, in plain English. The 9 September issue said five applications had arrived on 7 and 8 September; there were six and the group says so at the top. The sixth, MC/26/1719, is the travel plan: marked as a draft, silent on the community hub and the sports ground and missing ten commitments made at the appeal. The group has objected to all six and all six now close on 1 or 2 October. The issue also covers the Higham Road refusal notice and sets out four dated posts for the weeks ahead.

The group has filed a six-ground objection to MC/26/1719, the travel plan Medway is being asked to approve under condition 15. The condition requires a Final Detailed Travel Plan before each phase is occupied. What has been filed is marked ‘Draft’ on its cover, watermarked DRAFT on its pages and called a ‘Final draft’ in its own revision table. It names no phase, counts all 250 homes as one and says nothing about how people will reach the community hub or the replacement sports ground. Set against the Framework Travel Plan attached to the section 106 agreement, ten commitments are missing, among them a steering group with residents on it, personal travel advice for every household and surveys by an independent fieldwork company. Its baseline is the 2011 Census and on the Framework Travel Plan’s own build-out estimate the first survey could fall after the three-year monitoring period the plan quotes from the section 106 agreement has ended. The group asks Medway to refuse it, or to hold it until a final plan is filed for each phase once that phase’s layout is approved. Comment by 2 October 2026, when Medway’s consultation period ends.

Medway has published consultation periods on all six applications validated on 7 and 8 September 2026. Comments on MC/26/1722 and MC/26/1723 close on 1 October 2026; on MC/26/1719, MC/26/1720, MC/26/1721 and MC/26/1724 they close on 2 October 2026. Each period runs for 21 days, which is what the group’s covering letter of 9 September asked for. One of the six had not been picked up here before. MC/26/1719 asks Medway to approve the travel plan required by condition 15; its file holds an application form and a 26-page travel plan by the consultancy DHA, marked ‘Draft’ on its cover. The group has since objected to it; see the notice above. MC/26/1721, which had nothing on its file on 9 September, now has an application form and four drawings. Twelve applications on the Church Street land are now undetermined.

Medway validated four further applications to discharge conditions on the Church Street permission on 7 and 8 September 2026: MC/26/1720 on air quality, MC/26/1721 and MC/26/1722 on highway works and MC/26/1724 on noise. Internal target dates are 2 and 3 November. MC/26/1721 was validated on 7 September and its documents tab is empty — no application form, no covering letter, no drawing — while the other three all carry documents. Residents are invited to comment on an application whose contents have not been published. Ten applications on this land are now undetermined and on Medway’s own register only three of the 54 conditions have ever been discharged: condition 5, condition 6 and condition 53. Correction, 11 September 2026: there were six applications, not four. MC/26/1723, on the Cooling Road improvements, was validated on 7 September and found by the group on 9 September; MC/26/1719, on the travel plan, was validated on 7 September and found on 11 September. That made twelve undetermined applications on this land, not ten.