Within the last few weeks, the possibility of extensive house building around Capstone Valley has again been put onto the agenda, through the Tory Council’s renewed attempts at creating an over-arching development plan for Medway.
The Medway Magna consortium want to put 9,000 homes in the fields around Capstone, despite enough land having been identified for Medway’s future housing needs at an ex Ministry of Defence site on the Peninsula.
This problem could have been avoided, were it not for Medway’s Tory administration’s incompetence in drawing up the development plan for the area known as the Local Development Framework (LDF). 
The LDF was drafted some time ago, but the Tories did not identify enough land for employment.  As a result, the Inspector declared that “there would appear to be no alternative but to conclude that the Core Strategy lacks any recognisable strategy for the scale and location of employment” and the Council was forced to withdraw the document and re-write it.
At the time, in August 2007, I warned that this failure on the Tories part could lead to Medway Magna trying to implement their plans once more, and sadly, this has proved to be the case. Council taxpayers are also incurring hundreds of thousands of pounds of additional costs because the LDF has to be rewritten.
Medway Magna’s plans have raised deep concerns with local people in the area, and in Medway as a whole, as the valley area is a vital green space. 
All the Labour MPs, and all Labour councillors, are opposed to these plans.  The MPs had worked hard, helping to negotiate with the Ministry of Defence, to secure alternative brownfield land for housing and it is frustrating to see Medway Magna being handed another opportunity to put forward their unpopular and misguided proposals.
We will continue the campaign to save Capstone Valley, and ensure that once again, these plans are rejected with the hope that this time, they can never be resurrected.