Looking for woodland to rent or buy in Kent

[matbic]

Hi

I am new to this forum.

My ambition is to find some woodland & adjacent fields, to buy or lease long term in or in close proximity to Joss Bay, Broadstairs Kent.

My goal is to create a specialist campsite with a collection of temporary structures created by experimental architects interested in ‘living off grid’ and the ‘small living’ movement.

Example: tree tents - http://www.luminair.co.uk/treetents.html

The site will be host to woodland courses, foraging classes and ideally surf camps for the adjacent Joss Bay area.

I know I will require special planning permission to create a space like this, which has to be completely sensitive to the surrounding environment and local eco system.

Does anyone have any advice where to start the conversation regarding leasing land etc... I have already spoken to woodlands.co.uk, but they felt my starting point was the district council?

Thank you

Mat

[oldclaypaws]

Woodands.co.uk were probably right. Before identifying particular woods where the concept might work, you need to have a chat with the planners about your vision and get some guidelines about how they see the concept and what their opinion is and the criteria they would use to look on it favourably.

Education and tourism facilities are two of the areas where the planners are more open to ideas, but they'll still want to be satisfied about the basics of noise and visual impact on nearby residents, sanitation and access. They are quite approachable and helpful and used to general planning enquiries.

Woodlands.co.uk have restrictive covenants on all their plots which block anything that would disturb neighbouring plot holders, that would likely include your proposals, so I'm not surprised they weren't very helpful, its not really their scene. Most small woodland owners have bought their woods to use themselves, we've had numerous requests for rented space but I'm not aware of any firm offers.

There are neglected unmanaged woods that are unused, including chestnut coppice in Kent where they previously grew poles for hops. You've specified a very particular area though, in a quite densely populated location near a Town centre. Apart from a golf course I see little open space in Margate and suspect you'll have to look further afield for a wood. Most campsites are in isolated rural locations where they are a nicer environment to stay in and less likely to disturb other people. A suitable location may necessitate having to look further afield than Joss Bay.

There are other people I've bumped into on FB who are running woodland courses and doing forest schools, and lots of off gridders. Might be worth while building some contacts and ideas on there.