Rob Bailey

What do new Park and Ride sites, a concert hall, a modern library, better roads and a more attractive town centre have in common?

The answer is houses.

Two years ago Maidstone council committed itself to finding room for 10,080 homes in the borough over the next 20 years.

In return, Maidstone can bid for huge sums of money under the government’s Growth Point deal to make the borough a better, cleaner place to live.

Other large projects will also depend on house-building for cash. When KCC announced a new library and history centre for Maidstone, at Springfield, it said that part of the funding would come from selling nearby land to developers.

But what happens when the market crashes, and fewer new homes are built?

There are already signs that this is the case. Significantly, the first scheme announced under the Growth Point deal – 80 homes in Armstrong Road – has already been scrapped by Wimpey Homes. The council is still trying to find a new developer for the site.

Cllr Chris Garland (Con), leader of Maidstone council, believes signing up to the Growth Point deal was not a mistake and that Maidstone will still get the full benefit of it, despite the housing slump.

After taking office in May, he circulated a memo to senior councillors and officers putting the town’s economy at the top of his priority list over the next two years.

He said: “Growth Point status is, in essence, about housing numbers: 10,080 over 20 years, and 5,000 of those by 2016.

“But we were right to sign up to it. Tonbridge and Malling will have to build 7,000 homes over that time and is not a growth point, so it will not get the extra funds.

“We will have challenges in hitting the targets over the next one or two years but I am confident that we will hit the target. The economic cycle is in a downturn but it won’t last 20 years.

“We have demonstrated that we can deliver, hence the £5 million we received this year.”

The council hopes to receive up to £50 million by 2017. So far £1.3 million has been spent on a new council depot in Langley Park Farm, near the Park Wood industrial estate, £140,000 on new play areas and a teen shelter at South Park, and £330,000 on improving traffic flow and pollution in Maidstone town centre.

If the rest of the money materialises it will be spent on a number of projects that have been sitting on the council’s Christmas list for years: a £7 million revamp of the town centre; the Leeds/Langley bypass; the creation of a heritage quarter centred on the Archbishops’ Palace; and the All Saints Link Road, a long-awaited scheme which would vastly improve the town’s one way system.

But Cllr Garland recognises the risks of building too many homes without the jobs and services to support them.

He said: “We have to make sure we don’t end up with a town that is purely housing, as we would just end up with more people commuting. There would be no benefit to the town.”

He aims to use the extra money to boost business in Maidstone, both by attracting more high-paying white collar businesses to the town and by encouraging more residents to start their own small businesses.

“We have to couple housing with economic activity and raising the skill level of our population, otherwise all we end up with us a lot of housing,” he said.

“We have to raise the average wage, because Maidstone has a low wage compared with the rest of Kent.

“People might say why do this now? It is more important to tackle it now, because of the looming recession.”

When he took power in May, one of the linchpins for his plan to boost business was already in place: Eclipse Park, a new out-of-town office development near Junction 7 of the M20. Plans for the next phase of building were approved by the council on June 26.

Eclipse Park will soon be home to a major office of the successful insurance firm, Towergate.

Cllr Garland said: “Towergate is one of the largest expanding companies in the UK, and they are moving in to Eclipse Park. It is exciting what is going on there.

“Our concern is that good quality jobs go to people in Maidstone.

“We will consider spending money on adult education, and our main role is as a major advocate.

“We are talking to the Federation of Small Businesses about their ideas for raising skill levels in the borough, and we are talking to KCC because Maidstone does not get enough GCSE grades A-C.

“We want to help people to start their own businesses. One idea we had two years ago was to create small business start-ups in Park Wood, but it hasn’t happened yet. We will look at that again and find out why not.”