Policy information sourced from the Dartford Core Strategy

CS 22: Sports, Recreation and Culture Facilities

The Council will extend sports, cultural and recreational facilities in the Borough, nurture and develop community-based sports and cultural projects and develop an elite offer as a way of encouraging participation.

The Council will work with its partners to implement consents for sports, recreation and culture facilities at Eastern Quarry, Ebbsfleet and Bluewater. The Council will also seek to improve leisure and recreation facilities in Dartford Town Centre. Opportunities to provide a replacement swimming pool and leisure centre for Fairfield Pool at the Acacia Hall Complex will be explored.

Stone Lodge has been identified as a site where sport and recreational uses requiring more extensive use of land would be appropriate. Working in partnership, the Council will encourage the development of centres of excellence for sport and recreational facilities at this location. Where the sport/recreational element is not, by itself, financially viable, the Council will consider non sporting development on part of the site in order to enable the provision. Any development should include proposals for access to the facilities by community-based organisations.

The Council will encourage leisure uses of an outdoor nature or set within generous greenspace at Swanscombe Peninsula. The Council will also encourage water-based activities on the Borough’s recreational lakes and along the River Thames, to the extent that navigation, hydrology, water quality and ecological protection of the lakes/river permits, where the development scheme can be designed to ensure the provision of related land-side facilities, car parking and access and where development is appropriate to the character of the area.

Appropriate existing sport, recreational and cultural facilities will be protected, unless it can be demonstrated that the facility is no longer needed or an equivalent replacement facility in terms of quality, quantity and accessibility is provided elsewhere.

Community sport and cultural facilities will be required at major development sites, in scale with the needs of the community. Smaller scale sporting facilities in the rural villages, will be supported, where these serve local needs.

For more information please see the Core Strategy