Shottendane Road, Margate

The proposals included the re-alignment of Shottendane Road with the provision of a new roundabout linked to a second new roundabout on Manston Road. These improvements were part of Kent County Council’s “Inner Circuit” road scheme for Margate.

Despite being allocated in the council’s local plan, the site presented a number of challenges including:

• Topography – the site is very sloping in nature, which led to engineering challenges to design the new roads, ecology, the need to disprove any functional link to Thames Estuary Special Protection Area and provide onsite farmland bird mitigation.
• Archaeology – trial trenching found an on-site Saxon burial ground that needed to be preserved.
• Heritage – the site is in close proximity to a number of listed buildings, which meant that any developable areas needed to be planned sensitively.
• Surface water flood risk – there was a need to retain a large overland flow path of water through the site.

The complexity of the site meant there were large abnormal costs, leading to a planning viability assessment, which led to a reduced affordable housing percentage with the council.