Portfolio Update: 6 October 2026

This post documents the past month of work across my portfolio. It is not content for its own sake, but a record of what is actually happening, offered to those supporting or following this inquiry. I welcome corrections, additions, and disagreements from anyone working in this space.

September left no lull. Three threads defined it, specifically a formal challenge to the Sevenoaks District Local Plan, a new collaboration across the Atlantic with Come Together CK, and a series of bioregional gatherings across Kent and Sussex.

Response to the Sevenoaks District Local Plan

Sevenoaks District Council's new Local Plan will steer development across the District until 2042. I submitted nine representations under Regulation 19, arguing that it fails the tests of legal compliance and soundness. The evidence base, correspondence, and supporting research run to thousands of pages, and I relied on AI to read and cross-reference them. I support the area having an up-to-date Plan, and my purpose is to improve it, not obstruct it. My objection primarily concerns sequencing, and the logic behind it matters far more than the nationally mandated housing targets.

The Plan treats the future as a forecast to optimize against. It fixes a requirement of 17,460 homes, draws a trajectory across fifteen years, and attaches a list of mitigations. This approach can only work in steady conditions, but the upcoming decades will not be stable. Chalk streams are drying and flooding in turn, a major water undertaker is financially fragile, construction capacity is contested, and local government reorganization will dissolve the authority that wrote the Plan. Risk in this setting compounds and behaves non-linearly, so a plan tuned to one projection becomes brittle the moment reality diverges.

Therefore, the objective with this type of long-term plan should be to design for optionality. A sound choice preserves the capacity of later decision-makers to respond. If the assumptions behind a commitment fail, can we change course?

One-way and two-way doors

This question sorts commitments into two types. A one-way door cannot reopen once crossed. A two-way door can be walked back through as evidence arrives.

The Plan's largest commitments swing one way. Pedham Place would release land for 2,600 homes from the Green Belt inside the Kent Downs National Landscape, a loss no later review can repair. The Council's own evidence concedes that the allocation would fail to conserve and enhance its natural beauty. ST4-7 would place 1,500 homes on the River Darent floodplain, where about 45% of the site flooded in 1969, beside a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and partly over a groundwater protection zone. Growth across the catchment would also precede the water company plans meant to supply it, since their next review iteration arrives after Plan adoption.

Each of these commitments rests on assumptions that remain unsecured. National Highways does not endorse the M25 Junction 3 scheme. Water resource plans exclude the growth. The Council's viability evidence suggests Pedham Place may deliver closer to 20% affordable housing than the 40% promised. The trajectory also breaks its own build-out rules, which hides a real shortfall of roughly 1,500 to 2,500 homes behind a stated gap of 222.

The Plan gives scarcely any role to the doors that swing both ways. Consider the existing housing stock. In Sevenoaks, 44.5% of households hold two or more spare bedrooms, while 2.5% are overcrowded. Older residents want to downsize but find almost nothing suitable. Subdivision, annexes, rightsizing schemes, vacant properties, garage courts, and small public sites all deliver early, in modest increments, on land that already has infrastructure. Community land trusts and the Council's own housing company, Quercus Housing, could carry much of this work. I do not claim these sources replace the allocations. I ask that the Plan enable them, measure them, and use them first, because they can scale up or down as the evidence develops.

Governing constraints where they close

Another crucial principle behind my representations is scale-matching. The Plan tests its choices at district level, but the binding limits close elsewhere. Water closes at the aquifer and catchment. Traffic closes on the M25 corridor. Carbon closes against a national budget, which the research I cite suggests housing alone would exceed under current policy. Governance closes in the new West Kent authority.

The River Darent shows the mismatch clearly. It runs as one living system from near Westerham to the Dartford Marshes, yet planning treats it as a series of sites within a boundary. On 18 November 2025, the Council pledged to consider the rights of the river in future planning decisions, but the Plan does not reflect that resolution anywhere in policy. My representations ask for a catchment-scale water cycle study, a water security gate before the largest sites proceed, and a Statement of Common Ground with the Darent and Cray Catchment Partnership and the neighboring authorities downstream.

Stewardship as infrastructure

Many promised benefits, including green corridors, reserve access, chalk grassland, and permanently affordable homes, lack an institution to carry them. Someone must own, fund, and defend these assets for generations, and the Plan names no one. I propose treating stewardship as infrastructure in its own right. Any strategic site would establish an endowed, asset-locked community body before first occupation. Such a body could also hold floodplain and recharge land that development should avoid.

A plan that learns

The Plan also lacks a monitoring and review framework, which turns a static document into a bet. I ask for indicators and triggers that reopen the Plan when conditions change. Examples include delivery falling below trajectory, a final water resources plan that omits the Plan's growth, no National Highways agreement on the junction by a set date, or a shift in an undertaker's financial status.

Evidence gates would hold the one-way doors shut until the water, highway, and viability questions have answers. The Plan would then release sensitive land in a defined order, starting with the existing stock, then previously developed land, then small sites, then sustainable greenfield, and protected land only at the end.

None of these proposals delay submission. Every modification fits within the timetable for December 2026. What changes is the order of operations. A plan designed this way keeps its options open for the West Kent authority that inherits it and for the people who will live with its consequences.

Weaving Across the Atlantic with Come Together CK

The second thread stretches far beyond the Darent Valley. This month I began collaborating with Come Together CK, a community initiative in Chatham-Kent, Ontario, Canada that cultivates radical empowerment for both the collective and the individuals within it. Participation is driven by autonomy. Each person chooses how to contribute, yet decisions about activities, finances, and direction emerge deliberatively and collectively, rather than in isolation. There is no hierarchy and no formal membership, only whoever shows up. Some carry more of the organizing, others more of the presence, and the group spans everyone from salaried office workers to residents living in tents because housing remains out of reach.

I did not seek this collaboration out deliberately. The group invited me to contribute as a weaver despite my living on another continent, which says a great deal about how inclusive it is. Most of my work sits at local and bioregional scales, and this partnership offers a rare chance to operate at the planetary level. I share my learnings from my own practice alongside case studies from elsewhere, adding strategic perspective that lets the group's contextual knowledge travel further toward its aims. One early example is proposing that its building renovations incorporate retrofit, particularly where public subsidy could offset the cost.

Come Together CK funds weekly stipends through community enterprise, including renovations, car detailing, and hand-painted cornhole boards. Transparency matters here, so a disclosure is necessary. As a participant, I am eligible to draw from that pool. My general rule is to take 100 Canadian dollars, roughly 50 GBP, only when at least that much remains after everyone else draws what they need. Priority belongs to those in precarious circumstances, and I am not one of them. I accepted a payment once in the past month and declined this week when the surplus fell short. If the group judges my contribution worthwhile, I can benefit modestly, which feels both strange and genuinely nourishing. It also raises a question I take seriously, namely when it is appropriate for someone on the other side of the world to accept money from a shared pot.

Canada and the UK differ less than many places do, but the contextual nuances remain instructive. Learning to build community across that distance, without intruding, is weaving at a scale I want to understand better.

Bioregional Weaving Across Kent and Sussex

In Canterbury, the Bioregion East Kent gathering brought together people from around the River Stour to make sense of their own bioregion. Several of us arrived from neighboring watersheds, including colleagues from the Medway. Chalk geology and the aquifer it holds remain constant across every one of these catchments, so I spoke mostly about water security and the rare streams and habitats it sustains.

The most promising thread from Canterbury is a feasibility study on bioregional financing. Bioregion East Kent is producing it with the Bioregional Learning Centre in South Devon and a bioregioning initiative in the Forest of Dean, aiming to establish a facility that can fund all three. Most existing writing on the subject speaks broadly and internationally, and as Leon Seefeld's recent overview makes clear, the available mechanisms are plural rather than monolithic. This study instead examines the English regulatory context and asks which pathways would yield the most regenerative outcomes for the communities involved. Its findings, expected in mid-October, should prove invaluable for Living Thames and for any configuration that forms around water security and the chalk aquifer.

I intend to collaborate more closely with the East Kent team. A forthcoming visit to Furnace Brook, a regenerated landscape in East Sussex, will help explore how Living Thames, the Darent Valley, and adjacent catchments might connect more deeply.

In West Sussex, Really Regenerative, which helps organize the Sussex Bowl bioregion, hosted Places for Life with Rob Hopkins. Rob led a collective imagination workshop on the region's future, and the day gave me a chance to meet Jenny Andersson, whose work commands deep respect in this field. Attending from an adjacent bioregion made it especially valuable to hear how people in the Sussex Bowl picture what comes next, how Really Regenerative perceives itself, and what it prioritizes. Comparing their case with ours surfaced similarities and differences that sharpen how I navigate Sevenoaks, the Darent Valley, and the Thames catchment.

Closer to home, the Kent Biodiversity & Regenerative Food Festival took place on The Vine in Sevenoaks town center. I met regenerative farmers and food producers from across the county, several based in the Darent Valley, and connected them with networks relevant to their ambitions. We also surveyed local attendees about a prospective Sevenoaks Library of Things, asking what they would borrow and what potential they see. Throughout, the conversations served as a window into the wider ecosystem of projects across Kent.

Bioregions are not rigid containers. Water, food, geology, energy, institutions, and culture entangle across catchment areas, and many of the people I met this month see those connections clearly. I invited a great number of them to the Living Thames Bioregional Convergence, because sensing what comes next requires an open invitation to anyone who feels that interdependence, whether or not they share a watershed.

Upcoming Events

Living Thames Bioregional Convergence (16-17 October, Pangbourne): I am co-organizing this two-day gathering with the rest of Living Thames, bringing organizers from across the Thames tributaries, the UK, and abroad to share knowledge on bioregional infrastructure. Joe Brewer and Penny Heiple of the Design School for Regenerating Earth will join at the close of their pilgrimage through North Africa, North America, and Europe to share their vision for a thousand learning centers worldwide. The schedule is now available, and this short preview offers a taste of what to expect.

Sevenoaks Imagines Preliminary Gathering (24 October, 11:00 to 16:00, Sevenoaks Unitarian Meeting House): Theo Silberston of Shared Horizon, Phelim McDermott of Improbable, and I will host this smaller gathering ahead of a town-wide Sevenoaks Imagines in the new year. It asks what kind of place Sevenoaks could become if residents started imagining, talking, and listening to one another differently. Participants will experience Open Space, the format for the larger event, in which anyone can convene a session around something they care about and conversations form around what matters to the people present. Attendance is by invitation, since this session helps us discover how best to open the door to the wider community.

Deep Code Conversations: Fools Gold (4 November, 19:00 to 21:00, The Oak Tavern, Sevenoaks): The first conversation, on Zero Sum Lives, went well enough that participants proposed and joined a WhatsApp group to keep in touch and share further resources. The second session will discuss Fools Gold from Dark Matter Labs' Deep Code Cards, a philosophical code holding that anything which fetches a price has value, regardless of its function or impact. Severed from purpose, meaning, morality, and love, it nonetheless drives decisions at every scale. Locally, this code surfaces in a Plan that counts homes delivered rather than the river, landscape, and community they displace. The session is free, needs no prior expertise, and welcomes anyone in or around Sevenoaks and the Darent Valley.

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