Two Kent councils join forces to launch innovative plan to help unlock housing developments from ‘Stodmarsh ban’

Ashford Borough Council and Canterbury City Council are planning to establish a Joint Venture company to satisfy nutrient neutrality rules in the River Stour catchment area, enabling thousands of much-needed new homes to be built. 

A report setting out how the neighboring authorities plan to unlock housebuilding in the two districts was presented to Ashford Borough Council’s Cabinet last night (Thurs 26 Sept), with members approving recommendations that will lead to the Joint Venture Company being created.

Canterbury City Council’s own Cabinet meeting on Monday 7 October will be asked to adopt the same recommendations to establish the Joint Venture, to be called Stour Environmental Credits Ltd.  

Once established, Stour Environmental Credits will source the mitigation that is required to get the stalled housing market moving in the River Stour catchment area of both authorities. It will enable the buying and selling of mitigation credits to developers, enabling them to demonstrate that their housing schemes are nutrient neutral and can proceed.

Ashford’s Cabinet heard that the councils would set up Stour Environmental Credits using some of the £9.8m of the Local Nutrient Mitigation Funding awarded to the catchment by Government.

The new company will bid for approximately £7.5m funding from this allocation, with £450,000 to cover the first year’s running costs and the balance to buy enough mitigation to unlock around 2,000 homes in Ashford and Canterbury.

The funding will be used to underwrite the company’s running costs and the purchase of mitigation from providers. In the initial stages Stour Environmental Credits Ltd will not be a mitigation provider, it will work with third parties to facilitate the sale of mitigation credits that those third parties generate.

The aim is to have the governance of the new company in place by the end of the year, alongside developing some short-term mitigation solutions.

Councillors were reminded that in July 2020, Natural England (NE) issued advice requiring new housing development in the River Stour catchment to demonstrate nutrient neutrality. This followed concerns that high levels of phosphates and nitrates in the water were having harmful impacts on the Stodmarsh nature reserve further downstream.

The impact in Ashford has meant that the council and developers have not been able to build new homes within the River Stour catchment, which is having a negative impact on the Local Plan.

The report to Ashford’s Cabinet warned: “Protecting the natural environment in our rivers remains a priority, however the nutrient neutrality constraints that have been placed on the council present a huge barrier to growth and our ability to address some of the wider social and economic challenges.

“A solution needs to be found swiftly that meets the local requirements without creating further uncertainty. The proposed Joint Venture with Canterbury City Council, which has also been significantly affected by nutrient neutrality, will enable the hold on many planning applications to be released in the short term,” the report adds.

Cllr Noel Ovenden, Leader of Ashford Borough Council, said: “Our administration is passionate about providing much-needed affordable housing for local people while also caring for the environment, so I'm delighted that Ashford and Canterbury have united to deliver a bold and innovative solution to the thorny problem of nutrient neutrality constraints on housebuilding.

“I’m confident that Stour Environmental Credits Ltd will source and deliver the required mitigation to meet the pressing housing needs in the Stour catchment. This initiative is good for the environment, for responsible and controlled housing development, and for our local communities.”

Leader of Canterbury City Council, Cllr Alan Baldock, said: “Stodmarsh is an absolute jewel in our district's crown and deserves to be protected. But we also need to kickstart the stalled regeneration of the major brownfield sites in Canterbury city centre and elsewhere in the district that have been stalled by the nutrient neutrality problem such as the former Nasons and Debenhams buildings.

“And we urgently need to deliver the homes that people so desperately need, especially those that are affordable, and reap the benefits from the boost to the economy and job creation housebuilding brings. Not building homes isn't the only answer to the challenges posed by the need for nutrient neutrality, especially when it accounts for only 0.2% of the pollution problem.

“Along with our colleagues at Ashford, Kent and the other councils affected, we've been working incredibly hard in the background to solve this problem – talking to and lobbying government in all of its guises, talking to other councils across the country that find themselves in a similar position and coming up with forward-thinking and innovative ways of reducing pollution at source, cleaning waste water and creating the means to pay for it all.

“With my Cabinet's agreement when it meets, this is a really important and vital step on that journey.”

Ashford’s Cabinet voted to adopt the action plan to enter into a Joint Venture with Canterbury City Council for the provision of environmental credits; to bid for £450,000 from the Local Nutrient Mitigation Fund to establish the operating model in year one, after which there will be a full recovery of the operating costs as part of the credit income; and to note that the Joint Venture company will bid for a further estimated £7.05m funding to enable it to source mitigation from providers in accordance with the business plan.

How nutrient neutrality mitigation / credits will be generated

The primary focus for Stour Environmental Credits Ltd is to help meet the demand for nutrient mitigation (phosphorus and nitrogen credits) through the delivery of a basket of catchment-wide solutions to nutrient neutrality.

The goal is to tackle nutrient neutrality and enable the construction of much needed homes to resume across the catchment. Around 24,000 homes are impacted or forecast to be affected over the local plan time horizons, with over 5,000 homes with planning permission awaiting a solution. Current and future local plans in the catchment will require a large amount of mitigation to unlock this development – this is equivalent to 708kg of phosphorus mitigation and 14,251kg of nitrogen mitigation.

Stour Environmental Credits’ approach will provide a unique portfolio of nutrient mitigation, from short term solutions to longer term projects and interventions. The nutrient mitigation solutions Stour Environmental Credits Ltd is focussing on includes:

Demand management solutions 

Retrofitting waterflow measures in council housing stock and other homes (Ashford Borough Council is already installing measures into its own housing, which saves the resident money and also generates a phosphate saving which can be banked to enable new housing development)

Wastewater management solutions 

Improve existing wastewater treatment infrastructure
Portable treatment works
Promote connection to package treatment plants
Septic tank conversion

Nature based solutions 

Riparian buffer strips (gives room for natural dynamics of a river, such as rising and falling water levels)
Integrated constructed wetlands

Run-off management solutions 

Conversion of agricultural land to solar farms
Conversion of agricultural land to lower nutrient input use  
Winter cover crops (reduces nitrate leaching into waterways on land that would otherwise be left bare during the winter)