Hall Place on the Harbledown bypass will become 26 flats and four houses, none of them affordable. Approved on 27 October despite a highways objection.

Hall Place, the white mansion beside the A2050 Harbledown bypass, will be turned into 30 homes. None of them will be affordable housing. Canterbury City Council granted planning permission on Tuesday 27 October.

The scheme converts the main house and its coach house into 26 flats, including a new building attached to the coach house. Four new two-storey detached houses will go on the upper car park at the back of the site.

The building has been empty since 2019, when Canterbury Christ Church University moved out to its city centre campus. The council’s officer report says it was marketed for 24 months without any interest.

The decision on application CA/25/00521 was made by officers under delegated powers. The application had been with the council since March 2025.

No affordable homes, and no open space money

The council’s Local Plan asks for 30% affordable housing on schemes like this. The developer’s viability assessment said the scheme could afford none, and the council’s own viability assessor agreed that it “cannot viably provide any affordable housing in the current market”.

The same viability case means the council has not asked for:

  • money towards outdoor sport, play areas or parks, which its open space team had requested
  • the usual contribution towards waste disposal and recycling

Kent County Council and the NHS asked for money for education, health and community care. The report says those will be funded through the Community Infrastructure Levy, which the scheme has to pay.

The crossing Kent County Council wanted

Kent County Council’s highways team objected. It said the site was unsafe and unsustainable for people on foot without a new controlled crossing over the A2050, where the limit is 50mph.

The planning officer disagreed. The report says homes will bring far fewer people walking than the university’s education use did, and that the developer’s pedestrian counts showed this. It points to the existing informal crossing with a central island to the south west of the site, and concludes that a new controlled crossing is “not reasonable or justified”.

Instead, before anyone moves in, the developer must:

  • extend the pavement west from the site entrance to the existing crossing
  • widen, resurface and light the footpath from the A2050 to Faulkners Lane, where the buses into Canterbury stop

Harbledown Parish Council supported the scheme. It also suggested lowering the speed limit on this stretch of the A2050 to help people cross. The city council’s transport officer had recommended a toucan crossing. No resident wrote in.

The building

Hall Place is in the Harbledown Conservation Area. It is not listed, but the council treats it as a heritage asset. The report describes it as a late 16th century house, expanded and remodelled from the 17th to the 20th centuries, and “heavily modified in the 1990s”.

The plans were revised during the application to make the new and rebuilt parts smaller than the main house. The four new houses will be modern, with brick ground floors, timber cladding and large windows. The report says they are unlikely to be seen from the road.

The Canterbury Heritage Design Forum backed reusing the main house. It objected to “the style, siting, impact and amount” of the new buildings.

Other points from the report:

  • dormice and at least four species of bat were recorded on the site
  • the scheme loses habitat on site, so its 10% biodiversity gain has to come from habitat created elsewhere
  • every home gets an air source heat pump
  • 20% of the homes must be built to the accessible and adaptable standard
  • there is moderate to high potential for archaeology from prehistoric times onwards, so a staged archaeological evaluation is required

What it means for you

  • If you hoped for an affordable home here: there will be none. The viability case was independently checked and accepted.
  • If you walk or catch the bus at Harbledown: the footpath to Faulkners Lane will be widened, resurfaced and lit before anyone moves in. There will be no new controlled crossing on the A2050.
  • Building work must start within three years. Before it does, a construction plan covering lorry routes, deliveries and dust has to be approved. Site hours will be 7.30am to 6pm on weekdays and 8am to 1pm on Saturdays.
  • To read the plans, search CA/25/00521 on the council’s planning portal. Our Canterbury planning applications page explains how to follow and comment on others.

Sources