A DEVELOPER has submitted revised plans for a business park at Abbey Farm, Faversham. Abbey Park Holdings' new application to Swale Borough Council also sets 180 homes and a country park on the 275 acre site.

Company chairman John Stanley said the £80 million development would bring 2,000 to 2,500 jobs to the area. Last year a similar scheme was turned down after a long and hotly contested public inquiry.

But Mr Stanley is confident that this planning application will succeed. If it does the first people and businesses could be moving in in the summer of 2004.

He said: "We have absolutely everything in place: the access, an agreed contract and construction price with a major civil engineering company to put in all the infrastructure, and all the archaeological and ecological studies have been completed. We have carried out an exhaustive amount of work on this plan."

News of the latest planning application has been greeted with little surprise by campaigners who successfully fought the development at last year's inquiry. Griselda Mussett, chairman of the Friends of Faversham Creek, said: "If they think we are going to take this lying down they are wrong. They are still using land allocated for agriculture in the Local Plan.

"We strongly oppose any further development which impinges on the waterway and its setting and we are particularly angry that Clapgate spring and stream are still threatened with a concrete coating. Faversham needs development but not like this and not at this price."

Ernie Warner, chairman of Save Abbey Farm, said he had to admire Mr Stanley and his organisation for their perseverance. He said: "The people of Abbeyfields and the Millfield Estate will be horrified to see how close this building scheme comes to their boundaries, and once again we must raise the question of how the infrastructure of Faversham will cope with the extra people and traffic."