The anticipated Medway Local Plan Development Strategy was made public on Friday and disappointingly, but not unsurprisingly the development of a revised 2,000 houses directly on and immediately next to the SSSI at the deserted army camp at Lodge Hill in Chattenden site was one of 4 'scenarios' put forward by Medway Council to help meet housing needs in Medway by 2035. The other options will all see development bordering the site, still risking damage to the protected wildlife that lives there.
You can read the full proposals here.
Lodge Hill SSSI is protected due to the nationally significant numbers of breeding nightingale found there. The nightingale is one of our most severely threatened birds – its population has declined by more than 90% in the last 50 years. Fewer than 5,500 pairs now remain across the country. The range of nightingales has also contracted dramatically, so they are now found only in the south and east of England.
Lodge Hill is their best remaining site and critical for their survival, so how is it still under threat of being lost to a housing development?
To build here would mean the loss of most of the nightingales and other wildlife that lives there and would set a very worrying precedent for all our other protected sites. Thousands of people helped the RSPB to get the original planning application “called-in” by government and, thanks to those efforts, the application was dropped.
Thousands of people then called on Medway Council to revise its plans. It has made some changes, but not gone anywhere near far enough.
The Council's new public consultation runs from now to 11 May 2018. We need your voices to be heard yet again; we need to keep up the pressure.
Join me in adding your voice to this fight, before it's too late for our precious nightingales!
The North Kent Marshes are a very special area and worth preserving at all cost.