10 Aug 2024
The leader of the Labour group on St Albans district council has backed her party’s decision to increase housing targets, albeit with a caveat on where building takes place in the district.
Cllr Emma Turnbull said: “The Government is keeping the promises it made during the election campaign and has a great ambition to build the new homes we need around the country, including more affordable housing. Like everyone else, we are waiting to see what the final house building targets will mean for our district.
“The choice on where new homes are built is a political one and that decision remains with the city and district council. As it stands, London Colney is being offered a raw deal in a draft Local Plan which recommends building on attractive agricultural land on the edges and outskirts of existing settlements and fails to prioritise building on the grey belt or brownfield sites. The council’s draft Plan proposed less than one per cent of the district’s housing allocation on ‘grey belt’ land – previously developed land in the Green Belt.
“Cllr Mike Hobday and I have launched a petition against council plans to build 400 homes on Green Belt land west of London Colney and south of Napsbury Park. We’ve received great buy-in from local residents concerned about the Liberal Democrats’ current plans.”
The petition is available to sign at https://tinyurl.com/London-Colney
Meanwhile, Cllr Simon Grover, leader of the Greens and Independents at SADC, has also responded to the proposals.
He said: “The new Government housing figures are a potential blow for the district, though it’s not clear yet if we need to follow them as the Local Plan is in its latter stages. Either way, these figures are a blunt tool and one that will not see benefits for many years.
“What the Government should be doing is bringing back into use the million empty homes in this country, and pushing developers to actually build the million more that already have planning permission instead of landbanking them to make more profits. They also need to make sure that the houses we do build are high quality and low carbon, and made available to the million families on housing waiting lists. Finally they need to end the failed ‘right to buy’ policy that has removed so much social housing from the supply.”
The Conservative group has also condemned the Government’s figures, while also blaming the local Liberal Democrat administration for delaying the implementation of a Local Plan.
Cllr Matt Cowley said: “Local residents will rightly be very concerned about the Labour Government’s decision to nearly double our housing targets – up to around 23,000 for the Local Plan period. Unfortunately our district is now paying a further price for the dither and delays on adopting a new Local Plan under the Liberal Democrats – with our Green Belt having been left hugely vulnerable to speculative developers already.
“If we are to meet these new housing targets, it is very clear that the district council will need to have some tough conversations with residents about where exactly new housing should go. But it is clear to me that we will also need to look again at how to find new brownfield sites for development – our Green Belt simply cannot take 23,000 houses without fundamentally changing the character of our district.
“At the last Full Council meeting, I asked the leader of the council about the sites for hundreds of homes on the Brownfield Register – itself not updated since late 2021 – which the council have failed to unlock for housing.
“It is clear that that should be a starting point for renewed efforts to unlock more homes. Equally, we need to look at sites already identified in the Regulation 18 Local Plan where we could potentially unlock more housing by increasing the expected housing density – that applies both to brownfield and Green Belt sites. If we are to minimise the loss of Green Belt, it is my view that we must ensure that we maximise the potential of any Green Belt sites we earmark for development.
“The council must also look again at where its own land holdings could be freed up to provide additional homes. Council garage sites are an obvious opportunity to explore as sympathetic development would offer the opportunity to deliver housing on a number of these sites whilst also retaining the council’s garage stocks by including new garages in the design. It might also be appropriate for the council to look at its existing housing stock to consider whether future re-development could unlock a greater number of homes on the current footprint. Wider regeneration is also something that the council should now be investigating as another potential source of additional brownfield sites.
“Unfortunately, these new targets make the Lib Dem decision at Full Council not to seek leadership from our two local Lib Dem MPs on housing in the district look even more short-sighted.
“Our local Lib Dem MPs ran on a manifesto that would have required a housing target for 380,000 houses per year nationally – compared with the 370,000 or so houses that these new Labour targets add up to. Daisy and Victoria must have done some detailed thinking about where they would like to see thousands more houses in our district to deliver on that target if elected and I cannot understand why their colleagues at district council level did not consider that an asset and voted against my amendment to enlist their leadership, given that we knew new higher housing targets were coming with a Labour Government.
“Ultimately, meeting this new target will require fast, ambitious working to leave no stone unturned and identify the right sites for development. Where it requires new Green Belt sites to be identified – and I expect that it will – I hope that the council’s leadership will bring residents into that conversation, so that we can have a proper local debate and discussion about which options residents see as the best for the future of our district.”
