Ashford Local Radio - Ofcom Licensing

3.The Area’s Expansion
This is a key factor in the profitability of the radio station.
ALR has looked at Ashford’s expansion and realises this is a key factor to the radio station’s profitability. The information
below is taken from the ‘Ashford’s Future’ website www.ashfordsfuture.org.
’A major study has taken place in Ashford over the past year, looking into its future, and how much growth should realistically be
allowed to take place over the next 20-30 years.
Anyone who has lived or worked in Ashford for any length of time will know that in the last five years major changes have
happened in the town.The building of the International Passenger Station, the employment areas, the Designer Outlet Centre
and substantial areas of new housing, are all visual signs that where most other towns in Kent change relatively slowly, Ashford
has been and is undergoing a period of rapid change.
The Government identified Ashford, together with Milton Keynes and Cambridge/Stansted, as an area with the potential to grow
significantly and called for a report to be carried out into the town’s capacity for growth over a 30 year time period.The study
has been carried out by Halcrow who have stated that the town has the capacity to accommodate up to 13,050 new houses in
the period up to 2016 and 30,000 by 2030, an increase from the 600 houses currently being built each year.They also state
that growth must be monitored and reviewed regularly and if new jobs and improvements in the quality of life for Ashford’s
population have matched the increase in houses, then further growth above these figures might be possible.
Due to its locational advantages, Ashford has long been seen as a centre for growth, but the sensitivity of the surrounding
countryside and village communities together with issues such as flood risk, will act as constraints on the scale and location of
further growth. A key question, therefore, is by how much should the town grow and how that growth can be controlled and
sustained?
To help ALR establish firstly whether the area would reach its full capacity and also to help the radio station judge its
business and programming opportunities the ALR board commissioned 35,000 questionnaires which were distributed
within ‘Adscene’ to homes across Ashford at the start of January 2004.The results are based upon the replies received by
post and via the online voting from on the Ashford Local Radio website (www.ashfordlocalradio.com). All data was
verified by an independent witness.
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Local Housing Development Questionnaire – (Results Collated on Tuesday 27 January 2004)
1. By planning to build on reclaimed land, do you think that sufficient consideration has been given to the
safety of the householders?
Yes
No
Don’t know
www.ashfordlocalradio.com
Question 1
Yes 5.58%
No 90.23%
Don’t know 4.19%
Total 100%
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