Dover District Council’s own register records that a disposal notice for the former colliery site was received on 24 June 2026, opening a statutory protected period that runs until December 2027 — five weeks after the parish council that nominated the park warned the safeguard might never be triggered at all.

Betteshanger Country Park, the restored former colliery site near Deal, is being marketed for sale — and the community protections attached to it have been triggered, according to Dover District Council’s published register of Assets of Community Value.

The register records Betteshanger Country Park, Sandwich Road, Sholden, as nominated by Sholden Parish Council on 30 April 2023 and listed by the district council on 23 June 2023, with the listing running to 23 June 2028. Against that entry the council has added a further note: a disposal notice was received on 24 June 2026, and the protected period extends to 24 December 2027.

What is being sold

The freehold is being marketed by property advisers JLL, without a publicly listed asking price. According to the sale particulars, reported by the industry publication Modern Campground, the site extends to approximately 230 acres (93 hectares) and draws in the region of 100,000 visitors a year. The park’s own website describes it as a 250-acre park.

The particulars set out development potential rather than committed schemes. They include a feasibility study by developer Quinn Estates examining up to 150 holiday lodges, and up to 10 acres of brownfield land described as capable of delivering a mix of light industrial, rural office, workshop and open or self-storage uses. They also refer to the opportunity to implement existing planning consents, granted by Dover District Council in March 2024, for a 120-bed hotel and spa and a wave garden.

Companies House records Quinn Estates Betteshanger Limited as incorporated on 1 August 2019 and still active. Betteshanger Sustainable Park Ltd, the company behind an earlier phase of the site’s development, remains in liquidation. The council’s register does not identify the party that gave the disposal notice.

How the community safeguard works

An Asset of Community Value listing is made under Part 5, Chapter 3 of the Localism Act 2011. It does not prevent a sale and it does not prevent redevelopment. What it does is buy time.

Where an owner intends to make what the Act calls a relevant disposal of a listed asset, they must normally notify the local authority. That notification starts a six-week interim moratorium during which an eligible community body — a parish council, charity, community interest company or community benefit society — may submit an expression of interest asking to be treated as a potential bidder. If a valid expression of interest is submitted, a full six-month moratorium follows, during which the asset cannot be sold on the open market.

The moratorium does not oblige an owner to sell to the community. Its purpose is to create a window in which a community bid can be assembled. Beyond that sits an eighteen-month protected period running from the date of notification — which, from 24 June 2026, is consistent with the December 2027 date recorded on the council’s register.

The parish council’s warning, overtaken by events

In a briefing note dated 19 May 2026, Sholden Parish Council clerk Kevin J Lynch set out the position as it then stood, and it was markedly less certain. At that point, the note records, Dover District Council had confirmed that it had not received formal notification of a relevant disposal. No moratorium had begun, and, the clerk wrote, “no formal community Expression of Interest can be activated.”

The briefing note also flagged a specific escape route. Section 95(5)(f) of the Localism Act exempts a disposal where land is sold together with an operating business transferred as a genuine going concern. If that exemption applied, the note warned, the owner might not be required to notify the council at all and the moratorium process might never be triggered. “At present,” it added, “no public confirmation has been provided regarding whether the owners intend to rely upon this, or any other, exemption.”

The register entry, dated five weeks later, indicates that a notice was given.

What the register does not say

It does not record whether any eligible community body submitted an expression of interest. On the dates published, the six-week interim window opened on 24 June and would have closed on 5 August 2026.

That is the question now hanging over the site, because it determines whether a full six-month moratorium is running. The parish council was candid in May about its own limits: it said that while it could submit an expression of interest to protect the community’s options and trigger the moratorium, it would not be in a position to follow up with a bid, and that another entity would have to be created during the six-month window.

The briefing note set out three broad options — full community acquisition, a partnership or hybrid model such as a long lease or joint management of part of the site, or influence without ownership, in which the listing remains a material consideration in any planning application. It also noted that an Asset of Community Value listing can support arguments for a compulsory purchase order where an important facility is under threat.

From colliery to country park

Betteshanger Colliery was among the largest pits in the Kent coalfield, and closed in 1989. The park occupies the site of its spoil heap and opened to the public in 2007, first as Fowlmead Country Park and later under the Betteshanger name.

The site is also home to the Kent Mining Museum, which opened on 2 April 2022 inside a visitor centre built at a reported cost of £6m, and which tells the story of the East Kent coalfield using collections assembled by the mining communities themselves. Admission is free and the museum is currently open Wednesday to Sunday, 9.30am to 4pm. The country park is open seven days a week, 8am to 5pm.

Sholden Parish Council has asked anyone who spots an error in its briefing note to contact its clerk. Dover District Council’s Assets of Community Value register is published on its website and is the definitive record of the listing and the protected period.

Sources

Top image: the lake at Betteshanger Country Park — N Chadwick, via Geograph / Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped).