Plans to build 350 new homes and primary school in Kent town

A huge new estate of 350 homes on 37 acres of farm land could be built in . As part of the , land would also be set aside for education uses, which could be a primary school, and local commercial or community uses. Frenham Homes Operations is behind the proposal for land at Manor Farm in Tonbridge.

The site is north of the Tonbridge bypass, where it surrounds Nexus School, and it's west of town. Frenham Homes has taken what is often the first step ahead of a planning application, by submitting a screening request to . This asks the authority whether or not it must submit an environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the scheme.



This follows a similar request four years ago, but this time it was for 240 homes. In 2021, the council listed seven reasons why one was needed: air quality impacts; light pollution; increases in noise and people at Haysden Country Park; ecological impact on the park; effects on bats and dormice on site; traffic and congestion; and capacity at schools and GPs. Frenham Homes, through a planning agent, argues these effects can be mitigated, or, that their nature and scale are not sufficient to justify the need for an EIA.

In its 26-page document DHA Planning, for Frenham Homes, works through each of the council's seven reasons. In one area, it covers traffic generation from the scheme. It said the development would generate around 2,000 trips a day, if the 350 homes and a two-form entry primary school were built.

It said: "As the commercial/community facilities are proposed to be local facilities it is has been assumed the trip generation would be low due to being within a walkable or cyclable distance with the majority of vehicle trips being linked trips to existing trips from the site." It said the average vehicle trips' increase would be around 13 per cent, saying "it is not considered to be of a magnitude that is likely to result in significant effects or is of such a volume that is not routinely dealt with as part of normal planning practice on a regular occurrence outside the EIA process". It also said highways data did not indicate that there "is a highway safety issue or record associated with Upper Haysden Road or its junction with the A26".

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