Following an appeal lodged by the Applicant (details below), Save Ash Level has submitted its final formal response.

This will irreparably change our historic and ecologically rich landscape for generations and remove high-quality, productive farmland producing crops like wheat, potatoes and rape. This is an inappropriate site and a scheme with no local benefits. There are more suitable brownfield sites available, just less convenient for the global energy giant behind it.

Here’s the threat:

• 205 acres / 128 football pitches
• Loss of productive farmland
• Threat to protected species
• Destroy the visual impact and character of area
  
• Threat to the visual setting of Richborough Roman Fort
  
• 40 years duration
• 2700 HGV lorries – thousands of tonnes of CO2

This site provides the developers with convenient proximity to power grid connections and a more profitable way of exploiting this farmland for landowners John, William and Jeremy Smith.

Proposed under the guise of sustainability, the greatest threat to the sustainability, economy, character and communities of Sandwich, Ash, Richborough and Woodnesborough is the new industrialised zone and corridor this will create, extending almost from Discovery Park to Ash, resulting in the loss of productive agricultural land.