The first homes at a controversial 10,000-home 'garden town' could be occupied as soon as autumn 2025, KentOnline can reveal.

Construction on the new Otterpool Park scheme, which will be built on land just south of the M20 between Folkestone and Ashford, has not yet started but already milestones in the first phase are being mapped out.

Otterpool Park LLP, the company established by Folkestone and Hythe District Council (FHDC) to deliver the project, says it hopes to have secured outline planning permission by the spring.

This will allow work to begin on critical infrastructure - things such as roads, sewerage and utilities - which will underpin the new town.

Developers have also revealed Southeastern high-speed one (HS1) rail services could begin serving Westenhanger station - and the edge of the new community - by 2027.

Meanwhile, it has emerged as many as eight primary schools and two secondary schools are likely to be needed to meet the surging demand as thousands of families move in.

KentOnline sat down with Andy Jarrett, the managing director of Otterpool Park, this week to hear more about progress on the development - which has sparked major protests in recent years.

It will transform a huge swathe of land between the villages of Lympne and Sellindge.

"It's quite hard to be accurate with forecasts," Mr Jarrett said. "But I'm hoping the first occupation will be September 2025.

"That looks realistic now. There's some possibility to do things a bit sooner, but I doubt it because things tend to slip, so that looks realistic."

The 'garden town', which could one day be home to almost 25,000 people and support about 9,000 new jobs, will be developed in a series of phases.

Initial building work will take place around the former Folkestone Racecourse and will see the creation of what will be the new town centre.

A square outside Westenhanger railway station will be connected by tree-lined avenue to the town square just south of the racecourse lake.

Mr Jarrett, who was previously the district council's director of regeneration, said: "We're going to invest something like £20 million improving that railway station, which will enable HS1 to stop there, and we're pretty confident that will happen much earlier than we originally thought.

"So it looks like 2026, 2027 - it's possible.

"That'd be a limited service, mornings and evenings, and that's a big step forward for us."

Latest statistics from the Office of Rail and Road show there were 45,092 journeys to or from Westenhanger in the year to March 2022, all via slower mainline services as opposed to high-speed trains.

This is significantly fewer than the 682,674 journeys at Folkestone Central and 2,656,922 at Ashford International.

Proximity to the railway line and the motorway are key factors in the location of the development, but within the town's boundaries there will also be an emphasis on active travel on foot or by bicycle.

So-called 'mobility hubs' will feature docking stations for e-bikes and e-scooters. All major roads within the community will have fully-segregated bicycle lanes to keep cyclists away from traffic.

Another important consideration in readying the town for its first residents in phase one is the provision of education in the community - meaning families do not have to travel elsewhere for schooling.

Education provision was discussed at a recent FHDC cabinet meeting, where Mr Jarrett explained to councillors how the developers are keen to ensure school places are ready from day one.

"The current thinking is that across the site as a whole we will probably need as many as eight primary schools and two secondary schools," he said.

"It's a very substantial investment on behalf of this council, something in the order of about £100 million.

"For that reason we're not really keen simply to hand responsibility of delivering that service over to anybody else, we want to see if we can hold on to some influence."

If Kent County Council, the local education authority, was to deliver the new schools itself then it is understood 350 homes would need to be occupied before a school could open.

Opponents of the garden town plans have staged significant protests in the past, and in 2019 marched through nearby Hythe to express their dismay at the scheme.

They carried signs, made speeches and wore specially-made shirts reading 'No to Otterpool new town, yes to local homes for local people' as they made their way around town.

Objections to the development include loss of countryside, clean air and tranquillity.