Gravesham council starts building 76 homes on former Gravesend car park

Construction has begun at Milton Place in Gravesend, where a town centre car park is being replaced by 61 social rent flats for older residents and 15 homes for private sale.

Gravesham Borough Council has announced that building work is now underway at Milton Place, a former town centre car park off Gravesend High Street, marking the first development delivered through the Gravesham Community Investment Partnership (GCIP) — a formal arrangement between the council and housebuilder The Hill Group to identify and build new council-owned homes across the borough.

The scheme will deliver 76 homes in total: 61 social rent flats reserved for residents aged 55 and over, and 15 homes available for private sale ranging from one to four bedrooms. Planning permission was granted in December 2025, and the council says the development is on course to complete in April 2028 — just over three years of building work on a site that was previously used for parking.

Why the council says this matters

More than 1,000 households are currently on Gravesham’s Housing Register — the waiting list for council and social housing. The 61 social rent homes at Milton Place won’t clear that list, but the council says the scheme is part of a wider programme that already includes completed developments at Armoury Drive and St Patrick’s Gardens, with GCIP intended to keep adding to that total.

The town centre location is deliberate. According to the council, placing specialist older-persons housing close to Gravesend’s shops, health services and public transport is designed to support independent living. The government’s Brownfield Land Release Fund contributed £1.6 million to cover remediation costs — cleaning up the former car park land before building can start — which the council says limits the burden on local taxpayers.

What critics and residents have raised

Not everyone is happy about losing the car park. Local businesses and motorists have raised concerns that removing the town centre parking space could reduce footfall and push drivers onto nearby streets and other car parks. Those worries haven’t gone away simply because building has started.

Some residents have also questioned whether a scheme of 76 homes — only 61 of which are affordable — goes far enough given the scale of housing need. And with construction running until April 2028, neighbours can expect nearly three years of noise, dust and construction traffic in the area around Milton Place. The council and The Hill Group will be expected to manage those impacts, though no specific mitigation details have been made public.

The inclusion of 15 private sale homes alongside the social rent units is standard practice in mixed-tenure developments — builders often argue that private sales help make the overall scheme financially viable. But it does mean that not every new home on the site will go to someone on the Housing Register.

How the decision was made

The council ran a four-week public consultation in October 2024, including a drop-in event on 2 October 2024 and a feedback survey that closed on 31 October 2024. A separate legal process — called appropriation, which is the formal step that changes council-owned land from one designated use, such as a car park, to another, such as housing — was consulted on in 2025, with a deadline for objections of 5pm on 19 June 2025. Planning permission followed in December 2025.

Both consultation windows have now closed, so the time for formal objections has passed. The decision is final and construction is under way.

The bigger picture

Milton Place sits within a broader Gravesham housing strategy focused on building on brownfield sites — land that has been built on before — rather than greenfield land. The £1.6 million Brownfield Land Release Fund grant covers remediation across several northern Kent sites, not just Milton Place alone.

So while 76 homes is a modest number against a waiting list of over 1,000 households, the council is presenting this as the first of several GCIP schemes, not a one-off.

The council expects Milton Place to be completed and ready for residents in April 2028.