Project Description
CLIENT
Retirement Villages
SECTORS
Care
LOCATION
West Malling, Kent
PLANNING AUTHORITY
Tonbridge and Malling District Council
HIGHWAY AUTHORITY
Kent County Council
PROJECT TEAM
Tetlow King
PROJECT MANAGER
Andrew Snowden
PROJECT DIRECTOR
James Darrall
PROJECT
We were appointed by Retirement Villages to support a scheme for an extra care retirement village comprising up to 79 units to the south of London Road, West Malling. We prepared a Transport Assessment and Travel Plan to support the planning application. The application was refused in 2017, although there were no highways related reasons for refusal, and the development was subsequently allowed at appeal in 2018. Following this, we assisted in the preparation of a reserved matters application and S278 application.
APPROACH
The site access, with third party properties on both sides, was particularly constrained. Whilst it was possible to achieve sufficient width to accommodate two-way car movements, on rare occasions when larger vehicles were required to enter the site (such as weekly refuse collections), a passing bay was required to be provided. This formed a condition to the original planning application, and TPA prepared a drawing showing the design of the proposed passing bay, including swept path assessments to demonstrate that it could be used by refuse vehicles to allow cars to pass.
Following the approval of the reserved matters application, we prepared a suite of detailed design drawings and undertook discussions with officers at Kent County Council to achieve technical approval of the site access works, to be delivered under a S278 agreement.
OUTCOME
The reserved matters application was approved by Tonbridge and Malling District Council in February 2020. The site access works achieved Technical Approval and a S278 agreement with Kent County Council in June 2020.