Sheerness

On 22 July 2010, the planning committee of Swale Council unanimously rejected its own officers' recommendation to approve the damaging and entirely misconceived application to develop the area of Regency Terrace and the gardens at Sheerness Dockyard, constructing blocks of new flats on sites of important archaeological interest and driving a new opening through the listed dockyard wall in Blue Town. The society had campaigned vigorously against these proposals, and both chairman David Davies and secretary Ann Coats had addressed the site meeting held in the previous week (see the video report here).

The outcome was due in no small part to the tremendous perseverance shown by individual residents of Sheerness and the Isle of Sheppey, together with the vigorous campaigning by our friends in such organisations as SAVE Britain's Heritage, the Spitalfields Trust and the Georgian Group. We hope that this decision will finally open the way to proper, sensitive development of the area by those who have a genuine understanding of and sympathy for its historic importance.

Further details will be posted here as and when they become available.