20 The Ridgeway—New DesignPersistence and persuasion prevailed, as the applicants and architect agreed to hold the public meeting to show their revised plans in the vicinity of the application site, rather than at the somewhat inaccessible offices of the Trust in Medway City Estate.
Thus it was that a packed meeting held on the morning of Saturday 5th November 2005 at St Stephens Church Hall saw for the first time the new design for the mental patients' hostel that had taken almost a year to produce.
Local ward councillors Nick Brice and John Ward were in attendance, in their ongoing support of local residents who almost all oppose the plan.
There was a half-hour period for visitors to study the plans, followed by a question-and-answer session. During this often heated session—that lasted an hour and a half—the applicant's representative and architect were very robustly challenged on a number of issues, especially on the size of the proposed hostel and its true nature and designation (they even tried to suggest it wouldn't be a hostel, but it obviously would be). The new design still has eight bedrooms, all with en-suite facilities, and it was claimed that this would be similar to other properties in The Ridgeway.
Even allowing for a pair of semi-detached houses elsewhere in the road, it was pointed out very clearly that even this would amount to only six bedrooms, and certainly not en-suite throughout.
The plans themselves were interesting, and the increased "footprint" was something that the architect was unable (or unwilling) to provide, but intense questioning eventually elicited a far from satisfactory response suggesting no more than 22% increase over what is already there—the police house.
Work done by members of the Ridgeway Action Group (RAG) indicates that in fact it will be getting on for three times the size. Calculations by (among others) a very experienced member of the building and construction design trade show an increase in size of between 170% and 173·8%! One doesn't even need figures, though: just look at the architect's impression of the new design in situ to see how vast it is, especially in proportion to neighbouring properties. Note in particular the pair of semi-detached house, to which the architect had likened this proposal, on the left side of the image below:
The next stage in the proceedings is that the revised proposal will be placed before elected members at the Development Control Committee in the near future. Ward councillors will be speaking to this at that meeting whenever that might be; and we have a couple of aces up our sleeves that (hopefully) will secure a refusal of this application.