CarolineShah
How gargantuan growth plans for the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames will affect YOU
Updated: Sep 17, 2019
Read about Growth Planned Near You
Kingston Town, the Hogsmill Valley, The London Road and the Cambridge Road Estate, Berrylands, New Malden and Tolworth are earmarked for particularly heavy residential development
Learn about the different levels of development that the council considered to be viable across the Borough way back in 2017, although it only published the figures in May 2019
Kingston council's Development Scenario Testing documents ("DST"s) are being used as evidence for Royal Kingston's draft new Local Plan
These figures were agreed with the Mayor of London with no specific environmental, health or equalities assessment of the cumulative impact of such large-scale growth on the communities, neighbourhoods and natural and historical environment where development is planned to take place or on surrounding areas
See how these figures have ballooned even further in the draft new London Plan
Understand that there appears to be no robust evidence base to support large-scale growth targeted at our Royal Borough
Even under the LOW growth scenario that Kingston council painted in its DST studies, it envisaged development of nearly 20,000 new homes in just 22 years
This is massively more annual development than has occurred or even planned across our Royal Borough in recent times
This figure rises to 26,000 new homes in the MEDIUM growth scenario and a huge 33,000 new homes in the HIGH growth scenario.
The HIGH growth scenario means that total housing stock across the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames would increase by a whopping 50% from 66,680 homes in 2017
But the really SHOCKING NEWS is that these already massive growth figures have been inflated further in the draft new London Plan, which envisages a total of over 55,000 new homes being built across our Royal Borough in just 22 years
55,000 new homes will represent an 83% increase in housing stock from the Borough's 2017 level
It is:
2.8 times the growth the council considered viable in the DST LOW growth scenario
2.11 times the growth the council considered viable in the DST MEDIUM growth scenario
and
1.7 times the growth the council considered viable in the HIGH growth scenario above
How is this being allowed to happen?
And this large-scale residential development will be accompanied by large scale commercial development planned across the Borough, the scale of which I will lay out in my next blog post