St Albans faces ‘bleak’ future amid ‘chronic’ housing emergency, silk …

St Albans’ “chronic” housing crisis means the city faces a “bleak” future, a silk has warned. As part of a Planning Inspectorate probe into plans for more than 700 homes in Chiswell Green, Charles Banner KC told an inquiry “there is simply no evidence” St Albans City and District Council will be able to address a local “housing emergency”. Mr Banner, representing a consortium which includes Alban Developments Limited and CALA Homes (Chiltern), said building 391 homes south of Chiswell Green Lane will “deliver a substantial package of economic benefits” in the region.

A second KC, Paul Stinchcombe, is representing Headlands Way Limited which has plans to build 330 homes north of the same road, and told the inspector new homes would offer “affordable homes to some of the most valuable members of society”. Opponents of the schemes, Keep Chiswell Green, said the planning applications amount to “developer-led speculative applications” and called on the planning inspector to protect the Metropolitan Green Belt. St Albans City and District Council[1] has previously turned down[2] both applications for a total 721 homes. Barrister Andrew Parkinson has been tasked with making the authority’s case and claims there are no “very special circumstances” for housing which justifies green belt loss.

Making the case for 391 homes, Mr Banner said: “The housing crisis across the country is chronic and the housing crisis in St Albans is the foremost example of this malaise. The persistent under-delivery of housing – in particular affordable housing – presents ‘a critical situation’ in the district, as previous inspectors have found. “Indeed, in 2018, some five years ago, the council’s own cabinet recognised that ‘there hasn’t been enough, or the right type of, development of housing in this district for a generation.'” Mr Banner added: “Far from offering a positive future, the outlook for the council is bleak.

“The council’s local plan was adopted in 1994. It is a plan from a different era, which is not fit for purpose and which is out of date in multiple respects. The council has twice failed to adopt a replacement local plan and now, instead of responding to the housing emergency quickly, the council is only planning to adopt a new local plan in 2025 at the earliest.

“The council is operating in a policy vacuum. This is perhaps the worst failure in plan making in the country. The council is not a local planning authority that has any idea – let alone a clear plan – about how it will turn things around.” In addition to meeting housing requirements, Mr Banner said the plan for 391 homes south of Chiswell Green Lane will secure land for a new school – a “rare opportunity as school land is not easy to come by”.

He added Hertfordshire County Council has not objected to the proposal on highways grounds and claimed the site makes “no contribution to the agricultural productivity of the district”. Mr Banner claimed there would be a “barely perceptible effect” on the visual openness of the green belt if the homes are built. Making the case for 330 affordable homes north of Chiswell Green Lane, Mr Stinchombe said: “With demand increasingly outstripping supply, the ‘house price to earnings affordability ratio’ in St Albans has grown higher and higher.

In 2004, it was 10.28 – already the highest in the East of England.

Keep Chiswell Green campaigners protest plans for 391 homes south of Chiswell Green Lane in November 2022 (Image: Will Durrant/LDRS)

“By 2010, it had grown to 12.36. By 2017, it was 16.62, and in May 2021, it was 17.32. To put that in context, it means that individuals on median incomes need to find 17 times their annual salary to buy a median-sized property in St Albans.”

The 330-home scheme would be named Addison Park after Christopher Addison, a former MP who introduced the first Housing and Town Planning Act in 1919. “That act made the provision of housing a national responsibility and gave local authorities the task of developing new housing where it was needed by working people,” Mr Stinchcombe said. “Addison Park will do just that, delivering 330 affordable homes for today’s heroes – those who fought on the frontline against the Covid pandemic, offering routes to home ownership to those essential local workers who are ineligible for social rented housing in St Albans, but cannot afford to buy a home of their own in the city in which they work.”

‘Our motivation is not nimbyism’, say campaigners

An opening statement by Keep Chiswell Green reads: “We wish to make it clear that we are not anti-greenfield development per se. Our motivation is not, as has been alleged by one appellant, nimbyism.” Keep Chiswell Green urged the inspector not to “sacrifice” green belt to help developers “with targets to meet, profits to generate, shareholders to satisfy”. They added: “Green land is an essential resource in our attempts to mitigate climate change, and this portion of the green belt is essential to Chiswell Green for its role in cleaning the air of pollution to which local residents are subjected by the position of the village in the middle of the M1, M25, A414 and A405.

“Comparatively, the benefits purported by the appellants are spurious.” Keep Chiswell Green said what “little employment” there is in the area comprises roles in shops or restaurants, and “while there is no debate that affordable housing is needed, there is considerable debate as to whether the affordable housing being offered would actually be affordable to those in the relevant income category”.

Council: Duty to prevent green belt ‘death by a thousand cuts’

St Albans City and District Council is in the process of setting a new local plan. A “call for sites” consultation was held in 2021, and the authority is reviewing its options for future housing land. Mr Parkinson, representing the authority, said building on predominantly open fields would cause “very substantial harm” to the openness of the green belt.

“A substantial area of presently open green belt would no longer be characterised by an absence of built development,” he said. “Imposing a very high bar before inappropriate development is permitted in the green belt is key to ensuring permanence and avoiding the death of the green belt by ‘a thousand cuts.'” Mr Parkinson added although the council “fully supports the provision of key worker housing”, there are “significant concerns” about how affordable the “affordable” homes on the north site would be. “The development would do nothing to meet the acute need for affordable and social rented homes,” he said. “The occupation of the scheme largely by higher-earning key workers would not accord with the [national] objective for mixed and balanced communities.” The Planning Inspectorate will continue to hear evidence from witnesses this week (beginning Monday, April 24).

St Albans MP Daisy Cooper has urged the inspector to pause the hearing while Levelling Up secretary Michael Gove considers changes to green belt rules. “This decision is not about whether St Albans needs affordable homes or not, it’s about where these homes should be built,” Ms Cooper said. “It’s blatantly obvious these developers hope to take advantage of the government’s painfully slow progress to protect our countryside, and are trying to force the inspector to reach a flawed decision that simply may not be possible in a just a few weeks time.”

References

1. ^ St Albans City and District Council (www.hertfordshiremercury.co.uk)
2. ^ previously turned down (www.hertfordshiremercury.co.uk)
3. ^ Developer’s bid for 400 homes in Herts green belt between Watford and St Albans refused (www.hertfordshiremercury.co.uk)