Land between Copper Lodge and The Cloth Hall, Water Lane, Smarden

Appeal 6006475 · Ashford Borough Council · Planning Inspector, after a hearing · decided 16 September 2026 · dismissed

35 dwellings with associated landscaping and infrastructure.

Case page · Decision letter

Cited in: 2. Heritage harm at Forest Farm; 3. The reason given for discounting CS.8

Why this is cited. This appeal supports two points. It applied HE4(2) as its own requirement: there was no clear and convincing justification for the harm (section 2). And it treated a local housing policy with heritage and design criteria as consistent with the Framework's broad thrust (section 3).

Key points

HE4(2): "there is no clear and convincing justification for the harm to the significance of those assets" (¶59).
Local policy: "Policy HOU5 remains consistent with the broad thrust of the Framework" (¶66).

Quotations are from the officer report, decision notice or appeal decision letter, with page (p.) or paragraph (¶) numbers. Read the decision itself for the full reasoning.

Summarised for the note on Stratford decisions under the August 2026 NPPF. Not legal advice. Back to the note.