PROTESTERS against plans for a town centre regeneration have urged a council to treat 5,300 letters of opposition as individual objections rather than a petition.

In the past year Gravesham Council has received around 5,300 letters objecting to developer Edinburgh House’s £120m scheme for the Heritage Quarter.

It has registered the letters as all part of one petition, but campaign group Urban Gravesham says the council’s independent regulatory board should treat them as individual objections when deciding on the application.

A council spokesman said around 3,300 of these letters were forms printed by Urban Gravesham and then signed by members of the public, many of whom live outside the borough.

The spokesman said: “The planning department has decided to treat the forms as a petition for the purposes of reporting it to the regulatory board.”

A decision on the planning application is expected to be made later this year.