Who are we?

The Save Wincheap Water Meadows campaign is a coalition of residents and amenity societies in Canterbury who want to save an attractive stretch of the Stour river valley on which Canterbury City Council plans to build a car park.

The issue: 

The proposed site for the car park is a Local Wildlife Site, on the floodplain, in an Area of High Landscape Value and part of the designated Stour Valley Green Corridor. Otters are among the wildlife that have been known to visit this habitat.

The Council says that it is essential to go ahead with the car park in order to extend the Park & Ride at Wincheap once the new A2 slip road has been built.  The Council has given itself planning permission, but we say that there are other sites that it could use or that it could deck part of the existing car park.

Our case:

We have launched a Judicial Review to challenge the planning committee’s decision and the way it was arrived at. The legal challenge rests on three grounds:

• Failure to carry out an Environmental Impact Assessment;

• Legal errors in the Habitats Regulation Assessment;

• Misleading claims that the site had been ‘allocated’ in the Local Plan and that it would not have a harmful effect on the landscape.

We are working together with the countryside charity CPRE Kent and have promised that we will raise £5000 to help fund the initial phase of the legal challenge.  This is to pay the costs of preparing and filing the application for a Judicial Review.  We need your support.  Please help us to save this precious stretch of river valley for future generations.  

Thank you for your time and donations!