The parish council planning committee receive, read and comment as appropriate on all planning applications that fall within the boundary of the parish, this currently includes all applications relating to the Chilmington development.

The committee meet regularly (dates below) to discuss the latest applications. All councillors and any interested parties are able to attend and an agenda will be posted to this page three days before any meeting is held. Any comments made are submitted to the Ashford Borough Council Planning Portal and are reported to the next full parish council meeting. 

You are able to view any planning applications via the Planning Portal. To find applications relating to this parish only click here > click on Advanced Search > scroll down to the Parish Name drop down box > choose Great Chart with Singleton > click Search.

For information on plans for the Parish Council itself, please visit the relevant webpage here. 

Chilmington Development

The plans for the Chilmington area first started to form back in 1991 when it was identified by Ashford Borough Council (ABC) as a potential development site. When ABC produced the Greater Ashford Development Framework in 2005, the area identified spread over both sides of the section of the A28 running from Singleton towards Bethersden. At this point a number of residents started to campaign for more protection of the area on the Great Chart side of the A28. Cllr Ian McClintock and Chilmington resident Ian Wolverson were particularly active in the campaign having vast local knowledge from living in the area, and an interest in planning matters more generally. They successfully fought for the implementation of the ‘red line’ the boundary outside of which no development should take place. This line prevented encroachment across the A28 towards the ancient village of Great Chart and the new - more square, less rectangular - area was added to the Core Strategy document in 2008.

Following this the Chilmington Green Area Action Plan 2012 was produced as the site specific plans for the Chilmington area became more detailed.

A separate piece of work was also carried out to produce the Village Design Statement 2005 which fought to protect the ancient village of Great Chart and its characteristics.

The final and most detailed document relating to Chilmington was then produced, the Design and Access Statement 2012 (link pending) to set out exactly how the development as a whole would be built. This took a considerable amount of time to discuss, produce and consult on and many months were dedicated to this by parish councillors and local residents for this to be passed by a central government appointed examiner.  We thank them for their involvement in this early work where they spoke at numerous meetings and consultations.

Once the Design and Access Statement was finalised, the first overarching planning application was submitted in 2012 – 12/00400/AS

Phase 1 housebuilding started in 2015 and is ongoing. The entire development is expected to take over 25 years to complete.

All planning applications relating to the development can be viewed via Ashford Borough Council's planning portal.

The Chilmington development currently falls within the Great Chart with Singleton Parish Council boundary, so the parish council is a statutory consultee on all planning applications relating to the new area. Members of public are welcome to join any of our planning meetings if they wish to comment on, or listen to, discussion about a specific application. Residents are also encouraged to submit comments themselves if they have an opinion on specific applications.