Local Plan 2025–2041 third time lucky?
Council leader hopeful of its adoption this time
As long ago as 2014 this newsletter was reporting St Albans District Council’s preparation of what, at the time, was termed its updated ‘Strategic Local Plan’, setting out legislative guidelines, for future housing and other building development, across the district. It was deemed to be an urgent issue, the existing Plan not having been updated over the previous twenty years, that is since 1994.
But as most Harpenden Society members will be aware, during what has now been more than a decade, there have been two abortive attempts by SADC to formulate a new Local Plan (evidently no longer regarded as ‘strategic’). Both efforts were rejected as being unacceptable to government demands in meeting national housing policy, with this newsletter striving to record all the whys and wherefores, particularly in relation to the implications for Harpenden.
A third attempt at gaining government approval for the council’s necessarily revised planning strategy is now at an advanced stage, as SADC council leader Paul de Kort (who represents Harpenden East and is also a Herts County Councillor) explained when he addressed a well-attended Harpenden Society public meeting, held at Katherine Warington School lecture theatre in late January.
He pointed out that much has changed of relevance to planning issues, in the local as well as the national domain in recent years, not least across the political landscape. SADC has come under Liberal Democrat rather than Conservative control and, more recently, Labour has come into power at Westminster.
Under new Secretary of State for Housing, Angela Rayner, the Labour government has formulated a revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) which has set revised new ‘top down’ housing targets to be met before the next general election. Those targets call for an 88% increase in the number of new homes to be built annually in St Albans District, compared with the target set by the Tory government. However, SADC’s updated Local Plan was deemed to be sufficiently close to submission to government inspectors, the previous mandatory target of 885 new dwellings per annum was allowed to stand. Councillors are optimistic that the scrutiny process by inspectors and hence subsequent approval will be more rapid than with previous Local Plan submissions. And Cllr de Kort said its adoption by March 2026 was ‘a reasonable forecast’.
Focusing specifically on Harpenden housing issues, he said the total number of new homes projected in potential planning applications had already been whittled down from about 1600 to 1340. The reduction was accounted for by an early deletion of four relatively small proposed schemes, viz: 95 homes at Cross Lane, rejected for Herts CC-determined road access reasons; 43 homes at Beesonend, blocked pending completion of a study by the government’s Natural England advisory body; 55 homes on Rothamsted estate land re-designated for ‘employment’ (i.e. commercial) use; and 70 homes on the Piggottshill Lane sewage works site, where the landowner Thames Water had withdrawn its development proposal.
In assessing the priority of planning applications, explained Cllr de Kort, the legislators assign a ‘weight’ rating, based on the level and urgency of housing need. For SADC, which has a current ‘housing supply’ rate of 1.7 years, this level was deemed to be ‘dire’. Harpenden MP Victoria Collins, in company with her St Albans counterpart Daisy Cooper, are accordingly pressing for a quick and maximum ‘weight’ examination of the LP submission by the inspectors.
It had to be acknowledged however that, based on past experience with large scale developments involving multiple and complex infrastructure and related issues, like those pending from L&G and Crest Nicholson on precious Green Belt land, the process could take up to three months. The inspectors were likely, he said, to be asking SADC planning officers – and by implication councillors – many searching questions, with much toing and froing of exchanges.
Those questions would be likely to include the crucial matter of infrastructure funding, at a time of public sector budget constraints. To put that in perspective Cllr de Kort said it was estimated that the costs for infrastructure, including highways, associated with the two big housing schemes proposed on the outskirts of Harpenden was likely to come to around £750 million.
Also there would be the inevitable and vital issue of new home ‘affordability’, where some significant negotiation – with input from the developers – on the percentage of new homes to be categorised as ‘affordable’ (always deliberately in quotes in this newsletter) for buying, or for rent as social housing, can be expected.
-------------------------------
The Local Plan. Harpenden Society’s view
The community needs
1. A plan for more housing, especially small and medium size family homes
2. Affordable housing for the long term
3. To secure the Green Belt for the future
4. A commitment to deliver the infrastructure needed before development starts, especially
Final Thoughts from Paul de Kort
Next Stages from Paul de Kort
The full slide presentation from the meeting can be downloaded by clicking here.
