In accordance with Garden Community principles Highsted Park is an infrastructure led development. This means that junction 5a, the Southern Relief Road and Northern Relief road will be delivered ahead of new homes and the development will provide primary and secondary schools and health facilities from the earliest phases of the development, with provision growing as Highsted Park comes forward.
The delivery of infrastructure ahead of the occupation of homes is at the heart of the proposals for Highsted Park. It underpins Highsted Park as an attractive place to live and work, whilst ensuring that rather than new housing being a burden on existing infrastructure the significant infrastructure provision benefits new occupants and existing communities.
Investment in infrastructure at Highsted Park is achieved by Land Value Capture – the increase in land value can be used to forward fund the investment in infrastructure and community facilities that ultimately helps create places that people want to live and work.
It is only development at scale that can provide such strategic scale investment that has wide ranging benefits to communities along the A2, A249 and beyond, particularly with regards to reducing congestion, air pollution, supporting modal shift and job provision. The Councils’s own expert consultants, Stantec identified that Highsted Park is the only proposal under consideration with Borough wide benefits.
