Campaigners who lost battles against plans to build 7,000 homes in the countryside have revealed the toll it has taken trying to fight them.
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00:00Two controversial developments set to deliver 7,000 homes to Maidstone now have little stopping them.
00:08Both Lidsing and Lenham Heath have had expensive legal challenges, fierce community opposition and protests.
00:15The new leader of the council has always been part of these campaigns, but today he says they have to go ahead.
00:21We can't stop the development going ahead. It's set in stone in terms of
00:26the plan being
00:28unable to be stopped and if we simply don't, if we simply do nothing, the developers can put in whatever they want.
00:35And the infrastructure won't be there.
00:37The type of housing won't be what people need and want.
00:41Both new garden villages are set to be built in rural areas. At Lidsing, the 2,000 homes will be built on these fields.
00:49We're used to living in a semi-rural
00:54environment
00:55surrounded by agricultural land and
00:58we're just going to be swallowed up into one huge housing estate.
01:03The village of Bredhurst, the village of Boxley,
01:07everywhere is going to impact us so much. It will just devastate everybody's lives.
01:12On the other side of the district, the village of Lenham will see thousands of homes being built on the outskirts of their parish.
01:20Now one of the main concerns that locals have, if those 5,000 homes are built,
01:26what's going to happen to the 10,000 cars which are likely going to end up on this road every day?
01:32Now it might not look that busy at the moment, but
01:36neighbours say, on rush hour, it doesn't take much to grind this road to a standstill.
01:42The community here says they still know little about what the houses will look like,
01:47who they'll be for, and what infrastructure they'll come with.
01:51So what we're concerned about is that we will end up with an orphaned housing estate
01:58in the middle of nowhere, with no services, and the people that live on that orphaned housing estate
02:04will have to get in their cars to get anywhere to go shopping, to do anything.
02:08It's thought construction for some of the new homes could begin by the end of the decade.
02:12Although land earmarked, planning permission is still needed for both developments.
02:17The council is now forming steering groups in a bid to influence sustainable development.
02:22Gabriel Morris, in Maidstone.