Folkestone Voted It Through. New Brighton Still Has a Choice.

As a child in the early 1980s, I spent long days in Folkestone. My grandfather, Rev. William T. Joynson, had served there as a Methodist minister, and while his time in the pulpit was long past, the town still carried his imprint. For me, it was a place of salt air, harbour walls, the cobbled high street and vinegar-stung chips. We’d sit watching the ferries set off for Boulogne, the town buzzing in a quiet, unassuming way. It had a working dignity. It knew who it was.

This week, I read in The Guardian that Folkestone’s controversial harbour redevelopment plan had finally been approved: 410 new homes, 54 commercial units, right on the waterfront. The council voted it through. And the tone wasn’t triumph — it was resignation. “We cannot block the blocks,” one councillor said. It was less a victory than a surrender.

An illustration of the new Folkestone harbour development. Illustration: Folkestone Harbour Seafront Development

That hit me harder than I expected. Because it wasn’t just a story about Folkestone. It was a warning to every coastal town trying to reinvent itself without losing its soul.

Especially New Brighton.

Because this is where we are too — caught between old charm and new ambition. Folkestone shows us what happens when the logic of development hardens before the community finds its voice. When economic arguments become immovable. When viability reports override local sentiment. When councillors are told, explicitly or implicitly, that rejection equals legal risk.

Folkestone, colourful revival. The cobbled Old High Street, (Image: Getty)

Lesson one: if you don’t shape the terms early, you don’t get to argue later.

Folkestone made that bargain years ago. The planning logic was already locked in. Objections about scale, heritage, or affordability were painted as sentiment. And sentiment doesn’t stand up in court.

Yes, Folkestone’s plan includes some good things — public realm improvements, cultural reuse of infrastructure, even job creation. But it’s also riddled with fragility. Flats aimed at buyers who never came. A paused development at Leas Pavilion. And a community group, the New Folkestone Society, who surveyed 1,350 people and found 91% were against the latest phase. They were ignored.

Indicative_Masterplan_and_Supporting_Information__Doc_Ref_A49_.pdf

Lesson two: consultation isn’t the same as co-authorship.

If a masterplan is drawn in private and presented to the public as a fait accompli, “engagement” becomes little more than theatre. In New Brighton, the Marine Promenade plan speaks the right language — 315 new homes, revitalised public space, better access to the shore. It balances memory with modernity. It wants to hold character and change in the same hand.

But we’re still light on the structures that make a plan real. Where’s the delivery timeline? The funding framework? The phasing map? The S106 obligations and reinvestment guarantees? Where’s the mechanism for trust — the one that says: “You said this. We changed this.”?

Because that’s where the real danger lies. Once the development logic sets — once investment hinges on density, or a spreadsheet defines viability — the emotional language of place no longer counts. It’s too late to appeal to soul.

And the blocks go up anyway.

Folkestone voted it through. But New Brighton hasn’t yet. That means we still have a choice — not just about what gets built, but how it gets built, who shapes it, and who benefits.

If we want a future that’s truly ours, we have to stop treating planning as something that happens behind closed doors and start insisting that delivery is part of the plan from the beginning. Because heritage isn’t just what we preserve — it’s what we build into the future.

The tide hasn’t turned yet.

But it will.