College's Plans Might Not ProceedOwing to considerable difficulties at the "receiving end" of Mid-Kent College's plans to move out of its Horsted and City Way campuses, it is not currently certain that any of their plans will be able to go ahead.
While this will no doubt be perceived as a good thing by many, in order to be fair to all parties it has to be stated that the concept is a good one. It is only the consequences to the areas vacated that is of real issue.
While work is being undertaken to see if the Lower Lines proposals can be made to work and be acceptable to the clocal community there, we shall have little of substance to report to or show our residents in the vicinity of the Horsted site. Therefore we shall be waiting for concrete news on the Lower Lines situation before setting up the second public meeting about the future of the Horsted site. This will probably be at least late May 2005, and quite possibly much later than that.
The necessary preliminary arrangements have been put in place, and the logistics discussed in advance. It will be an example of real team work between council officers and the local ward councillors, and will be able to be notified to far more households than we were able to achieve during the very short period we had last time. A pre-meet also involving the applicant, their architect and consultant has been arranged for late-April, to set the parameters for the second public meeting.