Man facing battle with villagers to get Grand Designs-style home approved
An ambitious developer is facing a battle with villagers to get his plan to build a unique, Grand Designs-style home approved.
David Marks, 75, wants to build an eco-friendly five-bed in Smarden, near Ashford, Kent - with hopes he can then move his wife out of her care home.
However, the village’s parish council says it strongly objects to the proposals, which it describes as an unsuitable “overdevelopment” of the rural area which will “urbanise” the views of neighbouring listed properties.
Mr Marks says he is saddened at the lack of support for the new home, which will be completely off-grid, powered by solar panels and sheltered by bunds of earth.
David Marks, 75, wants to build an eco-friendly five-bed in Smarden, near Ashford, Kent - with hopes he can then move his wife out of her care home.
However, the village’s parish council says it strongly objects to the proposals, which it describes as an unsuitable “overdevelopment” of the rural area which will “urbanise” the views of neighbouring listed properties.
Mr Marks says he is saddened at the lack of support for the new home, which will be completely off-grid, powered by solar panels and sheltered by bunds of earth.
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FunTranscript
00:00The development planned is for a completely off-grid, brand new development, all one level,
00:08and it's off-grid with everything recycled, generated electricity, water processing and
00:14everything.
00:15There's nothing that's going to come from outside at all, so it's completely carbon-free.
00:20And yeah, it's something that is very exciting.
00:22We think it's unique in this country, certainly in the south-east of England, and really I
00:27hope that it's something that we can use as a bit of a blueprint in terms of that sort
00:31of development for other things we might want to do.
00:34But this is too good an opportunity to miss, and we think this is a perfect site.
00:38The site originally, where we're standing and where this new development is going to
00:42be, is all part of what used to be called Church Farm, but it's a site which included
00:47industrial units.
00:50The industrial units we converted into eight residential units, which we're very proud
00:55of because we think they're very attractive and we hope that people are very happy.
00:59And the two-and-a-half acres that it wasn't built on, which is this, obviously, which
01:04is why we always wanted to do something like this on it, which is why we've come now.
01:08So we finished the development at the back, eight units, everybody's happy, we hope, but
01:12they're very nice units.
01:14And this is the site, or part of the site, that we now want to develop.
01:19The planning regulations and planning permissions, et cetera, take time.
01:25If we got permission later on this year, we would then have to go for the pre-start conditions.
01:32There'll be lots of those, and they will take some time, so the program we have is to actually
01:37hopefully start building late spring next year.
01:40That's that program.