Robert Marshall-Andrews

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MP Serves Notice On Developers Hoo Peninsula Is Not Available

Medway’s MP Bob Marshall-Andrews yesterday, Wednesday 2nd February, spoke in The House of Commons’ (Westminster Hall) Adjournment Debate on the Kent and Medway Structure Plan.

In his speech Bob Marshall-Andrews set out the limits of development in the Medway Towns.

Below is the transcript of Bob’s speech,

11.13 am : 2 Feb 2005 : Column 273WH
Mr. Robert Marshall-Andrews (Medway): The debate gives me the opportunity to indulge in the rare, unalloyed, indeed practically unendurable, pleasure of congratulating the Government in very large measure on what they have achieved in terms of structure within my constituency during the last eight years. When I first became the Member of Parliament for Medway I was asked what I expected from my stewardship. After a certain amount of thought I replied that two things seemed to be needed more than any other to change the structural basis of the Medway towns. The first was a university: ours is the largest conurbation in Europe without its own university. The second was the development of the Rochester and Chatham riverside—a massive area of post-industrial dereliction caused by the death of the dockyard 17 years ago. I am delighted to say that although neither has been completed, both developments are now inevitable, due in no small measure to the Government's intervention.

Some £15 million has been given towards a new university based in the Medway towns—an outstanding contribution, which has made that development possible. Within 10 years we will have 10,000 students, which will change and revolutionise the intellectual and employment face of the towns in that part of Kent. Some £28.5 million has been granted by the Government to underpin the development of the Rochester riverside on a site for which the expression "brownfield site" might have been newly minted. That, too, will transform my constituency. There is no word for gratitude in politics, but there is a word for achievement, and that is a considerable achievement, on which I congratulate the Government.

When I first arrived in my constituency, it had the most unenviable reputation—possibly in the country, and certainly in the south-east—for overdevelopment. As a result, the Medway towns suffer in no small measure from a serious absence of green space, both within the towns and outside them.

It is an unhappy fact that the threats to the green space in my constituency come from the council. Names such as Watts Meadow and Copperfields will mean little to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but they mean a great deal to my constituents. Those areas are currently threatened by a council that is remorselessly selling off its own green space within the Medway towns as part of what it perceives to be a structural plan which is, in fact, no plan at all.

I say this to the Minister and I hope that he will take it on board. The Hoo peninsula, which is part of my constituency, is a rare and wonderful green space, which I enjoy as much as any of my constituents. We have fought battles over that land—for example, we successfully fought off incinerators. There is much talk now about development on the Hoo peninsula but, as far as I know, that is wholly false. There is nothing in any plan that I have seen—certainly not in one derived from the Government—that threatens development on the Hoo peninsula over and above the local plan that was agreed many years ago. I hope that that will continue to be the case, but I serve notice now, not simply on the Government and on local government, but on the developers who for many years have looked upon that area of Kent with salivation, that any attempt to concrete over or build on that wonderful and wild area will be resisted in precisely the same way in which my constituents and I made common cause to resist Cliffe airport, now of unblessed memory.