JOINT UPDATE

CALA AND POLO FIELDS

THE APPEAL PROCESS HAS BEGUN!

The Inspectorate has determined that these appeals should be heard together and has decided this will be done via the public inquiry process with an 8 day event starting on Monday 17th April.

KCG are putting together our formal response and have been granted “Rule 6 status” so will be fully involved in the inquiry.

Please email the planning Inspector using the points below:

If the email button above does not work for you due to your computer’s setup, here is the email address for the case officer which you can copy and paste into a new email
Holly.Dutton@planninginspectorate.gov.uk

CLICK TO COPY EMAIL ADDRESS

Please use a subject similar to this:
“Objection to APP/B1930/W/22/3313110 And APP/B1930/W/22/3312277”

Also include your name and address, and the phrase ‘I am against the appeal proposals’

Here are some reasons for the planning inspector to reject the appeal.
Please use these as the basis of your emails and expand upon them if you can!

1) Brownfield sites should be exhausted before building on Green Belt is permitted

SADC should not allow any new housing on Green Belt until it can demonstrate that all its brownfield sites have been built on first.

SADC should also enforce granted planning permissions on brownfield sites before Green Belt permissions are granted.

St Albans is surrounded by 85% Green Belt. We must use our brownfield sites first or our Green Belt will be very quickly eroded, and once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.

2) SADC should only be permitting the building of the types of housing that we actually need in St Albans

The local and county councils report on what types of housing are needed in St Albans but allow developers to dictate what they want to build providing they satisfy the affordable and self build percentage quotas.

3) SADC has failed the residents of the St Albans District

As a result of SADC failing to produce a Local Plan, the residents will suffer the consequences as this allows developers to dictate which land will be developed and with what types of housing. The Green Belt was defined for a reason; it’s not up to developers to circumvent these provisions.

4) The domino effect will cause further loss

Development of the Cala site will inevitably lead to the development of the remainder of the plot bordered by Chiswell Green Lane and Noke Lane – up to 1,000 more new houses. Development of the Polo Field site will inevitably lead to the loss of the adjacent site between the Polo Field site and the current settlement boundary – another 100 new houses ?

5) Failure to consider the impact of the additional traffic

The impact of the additional traffic that will be generated by the proposed new developments is a MATERIAL CONSIDERATION in the planning process but has been completely dismissed by Herts County Highways. Comparatively, traffic was accepted as a material consideration in the recent decision by East Herts District Council to refuse 350 new homes in Buntingford (Nov ’22).

6) Money instead of actual biodiversity net gain

The developers would be destroying huge amounts of biodiversity, which they have vastly underestimated, and they are proposing to pay for biodiversity units to be provided “offsite”.
Achieving this offset is likely to be challenging enough so as to be unachievable, even at the levels they estimate.   Either way, Chiswell Green is losing a significant amount of biodiversity and there is no clear plan as to how that will be offset.

7) Open and play space vs loss of countryside

In addition to the loss of biodiversity, the planning officer for the Cala application attributes positive weight to Cala’s use of 3.34ha to provide open and play space, but Chiswell Green will actually lose 14ha of prime green belt which has previously been available to the public, including for various horse riding activities, all of which will be lost.
The Polo Field development offers a “memorial park” but this is not a commemorative location and we already have a great local park. The loss of the benefits of another 14ha of countryside is of much greater consequence to the local community than a memorial park with no play facilities or other specific benefits.

8) Two Form Entry primary school not necessary so not a positive

Providing land for a new 2 Form Entry primary school on Chiswell Green Lane is unnecessary as the local primary schools are currently under-subscribed, the birth rate is steadily declining, and the actual number of households in the 2021 census confirms that past forecasts have over-estimated population growth in Hertfordshire. Chiswell Green doesn’t need a new primary school so providing and for one is not a benefit.  This land will become more housing in time.

9) Overplayed economic benefit

Cala Homes has stated that there could be £10.9m in additional household spending and £920,287 in additional council tax revenue for SADC from their development. Presumably SADC would anticipate a similar economic benefit from the Polo Field development. These figures are not justifiable, falsely represented and fundamentally flawed.  The suggested economic benefit cannot be given any positive weighting in the planning decision.

RAIL FREIGHT TERMINAL

Please visit https://www.savestalbans.com/ for further information

RAGGED HALL LANE UPDATE

This application was refused on 27th January.
It’s another win for the Green Belt!