An inspector has quashed the council's enforcement notice at St Clere Hill Road and granted a 3-year, one-family permission, citing a shortage of pitches.

A Traveller family can stay on a plot off St Clere Hill Road, near West Kingsdown, for up to three years. A planning inspector has overturned the enforcement notice Sevenoaks District Council served on the land.

Inspector T C King quashed the notice in a decision dated 28 September. He granted temporary planning permission for one mobile home and one touring caravan. The permission applies only to the family now living there. (Planning Inspectorate appeal decision APP/G2245/C/26/3378336)

The site is in the Green Belt and the Kent Downs National Landscape, and faces ancient woodland across the lane. The inspector found the caravan site harms the landscape. He decided the district’s shortage of Traveller pitches and the family’s circumstances outweighed that harm, for now.

What the council wanted removed

The council issued its enforcement notice on 6 March 2026. It said the former farmland had been turned into a home without planning permission. The notice listed:

  • one mobile home and one touring caravan
  • hardstanding laid beyond the area allowed under the earlier stable permission (21/00155/FUL)
  • close-boarded fencing and two brick pillars
  • a cesspit

It required the family to leave, clear the land and re-seed it as wildflower meadow within three months. The land had won permission on appeal in 2022 for horse use and a small stable. (Sevenoaks District Council planning register, appeal 26/00018/ENF; appeal decision)

Why the inspector allowed it

The hearing was held on 11 August. Before the decision, the government published a new National Planning Policy Framework in August 2026, and both sides were asked for their views on it. The inspector’s reasoning rests heavily on the new version:

  • Grey belt. The new framework drops a footnote that used to stop land in National Landscapes or next to ancient woodland counting as “grey belt”. The council itself told the inspector it now considers this site to be grey belt, and he agreed.
  • Unmet need. The council’s 2025 Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Assessment found a need for 192 more pitches by 2042, 115 of them in the first five years. The inspector said the council cannot show a five-year supply of sites, and gave that “significant weight”.
  • The family. He said the best interests of the young child living on the site were a primary consideration, and “cannot be satisfied with a roadside existence”.
  • The Local Plan. The council’s draft plan, published in July, proposes 38 pitches on allocated sites and 24 more on strategic sites. The inspector said a temporary permission fits while that plan goes through.

He did not side with the family on everything. He found “clear conflict” with the council’s landscape policies. He said the hardstanding was “unsightly”. He also said no proper explanation was given for moving onto the land without permission, and that the new framework gives such intentional unauthorised development “substantial weight”.

He added that the site “cannot be considered as sustainable in terms of public transport provision”. The nearest station is over three miles away. He said he had read the local representations, but they did not change his conclusion.

The conditions

The permission lasts three years from 28 September, or for as long as the family lives there, whichever is shorter. After that the use must stop and the land be restored. The other conditions include:

  • no more than one mobile home and one touring caravan on a single pitch
  • no outside lighting without the council’s approval
  • foul drainage details to the council within three months
  • a contaminated land assessment within three months, because nobody knows where the hardcore came from
  • an ancient woodland impact assessment and repair scheme within three months, by a qualified ecologist
  • limits on vehicle size and no commercial activity on the site

The ancient woodland issue was the sharpest dispute. The council’s tree officer said works inside the 15-metre buffer zone had damaged its protective role. The family’s consultant said the lane between the site and the trees would have kept roots out. The inspector said the consultant’s check was “basic”, and ordered a full survey instead.

What it means for residents

The decision shows how the August 2026 framework is being applied to Traveller sites in the district’s Green Belt. The council accepted that this site, inside a National Landscape, now counts as grey belt. It also still has no five-year supply of pitches. Both points are likely to come up again in similar appeals.

The inspector said the family could apply to extend the permission before the three years end, if they comply with the conditions. That would be a new decision for the council.

Our report on a two-pitch Traveller site proposed at Horton Road, South Darenth covers another live case. You can search any address, and read every application and appeal document, on the council’s planning register. Our guide to Sevenoaks planning applications explains how to comment.

Sources

Image: St Clere Hill Rd by N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Geograph and Wikimedia Commons.