Controversial A2 Tollgate Hotel plans to be discussed at Gravesham council meeting
06:00, 03 September 2019
updated: 09:00, 03 September 2019
Controversial plans to knock down a derelict hotel and build a petrol station will be discussed at a council meeting on Wednesday.
Gravesham council members will give their decision on an appeal against non-determination for the contentious project at a planning committee meeting.
Plans to build a petrol station on the site of the 114-room Tollgate Hotel were approved for a third time in February last year, much to the disdain of the owner of the neighbouring Shell Tollgate Service Station.
At the time almost 1,000 people objected to the proposal for the 2.5-acre plot, off Watling Street, Gravesend, which would have seen the hotel, which closed in 2006, torn down.
However, approval was rescinded due to the potential for the site to come back into use as a hotel.
Plans for the development have been scuppered numerous times since its original application.
In 2014 and 2015 a larger scale scheme, which would have seen a McDonald's drive-thru and M&S Food court built alongside the garage, were approved by Gravesham council before its decisions were quashed on appeal.
As off February 2018 Gravesham council had spent more than £130,000 fighting planning appeals against the scheme, according to information obtained by a KentOnline Freedom of Information request.
It came after legal action from Tollgate Service Station manager Simon Privett who lost 45% of trade following the A2 work and had to invest more than £1million in his business, just yards away from the hotel site.
Speaking after the decision to rescind approval last year, he said he was "chuffed to bits", adding: "The billion dollar question is will they come back again? How many times can someone lose an appeal and keep coming back?"
An agenda for the upcoming meeting said "if it had been possible to determine the current planning application, the board would have refused to grant planning permission".
The future of the Tollgate Hotel and the planning application is now in the hands of the Planning Inspectorate and not Gravesham council.
Latest news
‘I was fined £500 for leaving neatly folded donations by clothes bank - this isn’t fly-tipping’
Family of schoolgirl disabled in bus crash tell how their lives turned upside down
Emergency cordon at museum while radioactive object removed
