Save Oaken Wood: Kent County Council's Reform Votes To Decimate Centuries-old Woodland

Dense cluster of trees in leaf along a shadowed woodland path.

By an extremely narrow margin of 37-33, Kent County Council has approved the Kent Minerals and Waste Local Plan, which includes an expansion of Hermitage Quarry. This will involve the destruction of 100 acres of irreplaceable ancient woodland at Oaken Wood, West Maidstone.

To force the measure through, the Reform chair used “special powers” to completely block a Green Party amendment that would have saved the site.

The planned expansion will mean taking the bulldozer to ancient soils, veteran trees, bluebells, and rare wildlife in an area continually wooded for four centuries: an unconscionable and irreparable loss.

Here is a statement from Kent Greens’ Facebook page:

Today was an extremely frustrating experience for Save Oaken Wood campaigners and KCC Green Councillors who were deliberately blocked from proposing amendments to remove the expansion of Hermitage Quarry from the Kent Minerals and Waste Local Plan.

Reform UK’s Chairman, Jeremy Eustace, yet again demonstrated why he is incapable of serving all members of the council by using a little used constitutional technicality and refused to accept an alternative suggestion to the administration’s proposal to even be debated.

Reform UK in Kent are fast becoming control obsessed enemies of democracy incapable of adhering to the basic principles of fair debate.

Residents expect their representatives to be able to challenge the administration and fulfill the roles ascribed to any opposition group. That is a requirement of any functioning democratic institution.

We all know where silencing dissent inevitably leads us. Fortunately after today’s Local Government Reorganisation announcement Reform’s tenure at County Hall is drawing to an end, but it seems they are determined to add Ecocide to their list of “achievements” before successor councils sweep them away.

The next step will be to challenge the plan during the six-week public consultation, by sending objections to the Planning Inspectorate.

You can join the Save Oaken Wood campaign and stay informed of future developments by following their Facebook page.

– with thanks to Get Wild

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