麻豆约拍

Plans for a 拢650m urban development in Medway have been approved by the Government.

The Chatham Waters project will create nearly 3 and a half thousand jobs and includes hundreds of homes, a hotel, a supermarket and a conference centre.

Medway Council's planning department backed the scheme in June, and has now been rubber stamped by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles.

26 acres of brownfield land at the site of the former Chatham Docks will be transformed to create nearly 500 student apartments, a hotel with 200 bedrooms, almost 1000 flats and houses, a supermarket, a multi storey car park, new shops and university facilities.

The Portfolio Holder for Strategic Planning and Economic Growth at Medway Council, Jane Chitty, gives her reaction to the news (07.07).

James Whittaker from the Peel Group, the developers behind the scheme, and Professor Richard Scase from the University of Kent telling Matt and Emma what the developments will do for Medway (08.08).

Also on the programme, councils in Kent failed to collect 拢11m in unpaid business rates last year.

Radical changes to the way business rates are collected could see a larger share of the money kept by local councils, encouraging them to improve their collection rates and making them more attractive to businesses.

Critics say reforms could give councils too much control, allowing them to increase rates that would force firms out of business.

Jeremy Kite, Leader of Dartford Council, and Jonathan Carr-West, the Director of Policy at the Local Government Information Unit discuss the pros and cons of the proposals (07.24).

Roger House, Chairman for the Kent branch of the Federation of Small Businesses, chats to Emma and Matt about where Kent firms stand under the new plans (08.48)

And Matt finds out what it is like to stay in one of Kent's most unusual hotels.

The oldest surviving lightship in the country, built in the early 1800s, has been converted into a two room hotel moored in the Medway Bridge Arena in Borstal near Rochester with views of the cathedral and castle and Matt takes a guided tour (06.52)

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