Chiswell Green developments: Inquiry closes for Green Belt plans

An inquiry into plans for up to 721 new homes in the Hertfordshire village came to an end on Tuesday, May 9.

The government’s Planning Inspectorate will now consider whether developers can press ahead with plans for the new homes both sides of Chiswell Green Lane.

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St Albans City and District Council has previously rejected the proposals, which were put forward in separate planning applications – for up to 330 homes north of the road, and up to 391 to the south.

The council’s barrister and campaign group Keep Chiswell Green warned in their closing statements that approving the proposal would help achieve the “death of the Green Belt by 1,000 cuts”.

But a barrister making the case for homes south of the road has accused the council of “abdicating” from its planning responsibilities, because it does not have a set of up-to-date planning rules.

Andrew Parkinson, on behalf of St Albans City and District Council, said: “Both schemes constitute ‘inappropriate development’ in the Green Belt.

“Inappropriate development is ‘by definition, harmful to the Green Belt’.”

According to national planning rules, “the essential characteristics of Green Belts are their openness and permanence”.

Mr Parkinson said: “Openness … is generally understood to mean the absence of built development.

“It is not the same as openness in a landscape character sense and is not influenced by what we can visually discern.

“Therefore, there can be harm to the spatial aspects of openness without there being a visual impact.”

Fears Chiswell Green could ‘merge’ with Hemel Hempstead

Mr Parkinson referred to a Green Belt Review which the council completed in 2013.

The review notes the land earmarked for development – known as Parcel 25 – is a “strategic parcel” which “significantly” helps to safeguard the countryside and prevent merging between St Albans and Chiswell Green.

Mr Parkinson said: “The wider Parcel 25 forms part of a network of parcels which form the Strategic Gap between St Albans and Hemel Hempstead.

“Whilst the development clearly would not result in a coalescence with Hemel Hempstead, towns tend to merge incrementally over time.

“The development of this site would result in ribbon development along both sides of Chiswell Green Lane, physically reducing the separation with Hemel Hempstead.”

He added: “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 acknowledged previous drafts of new planning rules had earmarked land in Chiswell Green for new homes, but councillors agreed to throw these plans out, so the sites are not “at the front of the queue” for development.

The barrister also addressed claims the Land North of Chiswell Green proposal would provide key worker housing, and said this is an ambition which the district council “fully supports”.

He questioned whether providing homes in Chiswell Green would result in a reduction in house prices on the site which would be “materially more affordable” than in locations elsewhere in the authority area.

Campaign group warns residents would be ‘cut off from nature’

Campaign group Keep Chiswell Green was allowed to make a closing statement of its own.

The group raised doubts over the prospect of genuinely affordable housing but said the ambition is an “admirable” one.

The group spokesperson said: “The appeal applications before you now will not deliver the purported benefits, other than a number of housing units which will still not address the need in this district for genuinely affordable and social rented housing.

“They will cause very significant harm to the Green Belt.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us all the significant benefit that being in green spaces gives to our wellbeing and mental health.

“The Green Belt in Chiswell Green has been very much appreciated both during the pandemic and since for the tranquility, access to nature and sense of wellbeing it has contributed to.

“Permission to develop these two sites will replace beautiful, tranquil views with years of construction noise, dust and traffic, and leave behind imposing structures which will result in residents having their sense of space and openness replaced by a sense of being closed in, cut off from nature.”

Developer’s barrister promises homes will provide for ‘modern-day heroes’

Paul Stinchcombe KC is representing Headlands Way Limited, which put forward plans for 330 of the homes North of Chiswell Green Lane.

“In 1919, the Housing and Town Planning Act received royal assent, a direct response to the nation’s demand for ‘homes fit for heroes’ following The Great War,” he said.

“A century later, millions stood outside to applaud our own modern-day ‘heroes’ – those who had been fighting on the frontline against the Covid pandemic.

“It is a bitter irony that in St Albans, many of the local heroes being applauded could not afford homes of their own to stand outside.”

The developer has named its development “Addison Park” in honour of Liberal and later Labour MP Christopher Addison, who promoted the 1919 Act.

Mr Stinchcombe accused St Albans City and District Council of presiding over a “plan-making crisis”.

He said: “The extant Local Plan in St Albans – the District Local Plan Review 1994 – is the oldest in the country.

“When paragraph 33 of the National Planning Policy Framework states that Local Plans are meant to be reviewed every five years, the St Albans Local Plan effectively expired 22 years ago.”

He noted councillors had made four previous attempts to approve a new set of planning rules, but each had failed.

“There will be no new housing allocations in St Albans until the end of 2025 at the very earliest, with the delivery of actual houses to live in some years later still,” he said.

“For very many key worker households, home ownership in St Albans is, currently, not only a distant dream but an impossibility.

“Addison Park would, however, give very many of them access to the property ladder and a chance to buy a home of their own.”

Mr Stinchcombe said the “Addison Park discount” would achieve affordable housing, suggesting that house prices would fall to the region of £251,333 – 33 per cent lower than the median price in St Albans of £377,000.

Green belt  ‘needed to address massive unmet needs’

Charles Banner KC is representing the consortium which has applied for up to 391 homes South of Chiswell Green Lane.

He said the plan for 391 homes also features land set aside for a new school.

Mr Banner claimed there is “no perception of openness beyond the roads and residential properties that immediately adjoin” the southern site, and that council witnesses during the inquiry had agreed Green Belt harm “was no more than that which would inevitably arise from a residential development of this scale”.

He said: “There is no excess or egregious harm, rather that harm has been minimised to the lowest possible extent.

“Ultimately, this is fatal to the council’s case, given the acceptance that some Green Belt release is needed to address the massive unmet needs.”

The Planning Inspectorate is yet to make a ruling on the two appeals for the north and south sites.