Homes Sweet Homes

With the arrival of spring comes flowers, fresh veggies, and — you guessed it — Easter! A time of year where chocolate lovers can indulge on an imminent Easter Sunday.

So, what better time to look at how the most famous British chocolate manufacturer helped steer town planning in a new direction, particularly when plans have recently been resubmitted for 8,500-home garden village development in Kent, to boost the profile of the momentous garden village/city movement.

Brothers George and Richard Cadbury took time-out to move their factory from crowded and gloomy Birmingham to the clean and spacious setting of Bournville in 1879, to re-establish their factory away from the overcrowding conditions caused by the industrial revolution.

When the factory was established, George Cadbury began to devote more time to his ideals of improving people’s lives by providing a community of decent homes for working men and their families. A building estate was established, open to anyone who wanted to live there; it would be a model of good planning open to all – not just ‘tied’ houses for Cadbury workers.

The designs in Bournville became a blueprint, paving the 'Milky Way' for many other model villages in Britain and subsequently laying the foundations to revel-utionise garden cities, which introduced the benefits of open space into modern town planning.

Echo’s of such development have recently resurfaced. Otterpool Park, a development partnership set up by Folkestone and Hythe District Council in May 2020, has submitted a revised outline application for the 800-hectare site near Folkestone in Kent. The development aspires to deliver 9,000 jobs over the next 25-30 years and is made up of more than 50 per cent green space.

This is very much in harmony with Government aims to have increased housebuilding to an average of 300,000 net new homes a year by the mid-2020’s.  The Government do not just want to get the numbers up, they want to deliver quality as well as well quantity, and they consider that Garden Villages are one way to help to ensure that happens, meaning the prospects of such development will remain a hot ‘Topic’ in the planning world.

‘Wispas’ of a new era of garden city developments remind us that whatever comes of Kent, Cadbury’s vision of Bournville is just as relevant over 100 years on. Given the success of Bournville, which still stands proudly today, perhaps it is no surprise that current developers want a taste of the action.