06 Jul 2023
Liberal Democrat Daisy Cooper writes exclusively for the St Albans Times on the decision to sell the former Radlett airfield for a rail freight depot.
Residents and campaigners have fought against these plans for a monstrous terminal on their doorstep from start to finish for more than 20 years so this move by the Conservative-run County Council to enable it, will be seen as nothing less than a huge betrayal.
I have always maintained that whilst we need to reduce national carbon emissions from transport, it’s completely absurd to build a freight terminal where the lorries won’t have any direct access to a motorway, and the huge storage warehouses will sit cheek by jowl with peoples back gardens, clogging up our air and our roads. Long-time campaigners will remember that one Secretary of State agreed with this analysis; sadly a later one (the Conservatives’ Eric Pickles) did not.
Since the Conservative leadership at the county council contacted me in late 2022, to advise they were minded to sell this land, I have fought hard to get them to think again. Months of painstaking research and parliamentary questions revealed that their claim, that they were reluctant sellers, simply didn’t stand up to scrutiny.
What has shocked me most over the last eight months, was the lengths the Conservative administration would go to in trying to conceal the legal advice they received.
It took weeks of battling with their legal team to get them to disclose the legal advice notes – which had been paid for with public funds.
They turned down Freedom of Information requests, and point blank refused to disclose it when I wrote to them. Only when it was revealed they had accidentally uploaded some of the notes to their own website, did they eventually back down!
Those documents, some dating back almost ten years, proved that they didn’t have to sell. Their own barrister told them that they could instead have reviewed whether circumstances had changed since the Conservative Secretary of State gave the scheme the go-ahead in 2014.
We all know that much has changed in that time. Our roads are more congested, several large rail freight terminals have been built, and are operational, in the region. And the Thameslink route is busier with passenger services.
But when I challenged the County to publish their assessment of those changes? The answer was they hadn’t even bothered to look at it.
Ultimately, I’m now convinced that they never intended to oppose this freight depot. Campaign groups over the years have provided ample evidence that its unlikely this site would be suitable for a rail link. STRIFE had argued this as far back as 2006, when the first scheme was rejected by the district council.
More recently, Save St Albans: Fight The Freight has produced even more analysis which shows this will most likely end up being nothing more than a massive lorry park. We’ve seen similar moves by the same developer in Northamptonshire. Once the warehousing was built, the countryside scarred, and grass paved over for lorry access – they applied to waive the planning condition that ensures the site has a rail link.
Hertfordshire County Council has done nothing more than pocket the cash, and wash their hands of the misery their decision will cause. For a local authority to so blatantly ignore the best interests their own residents is astounding.
When the history of this whole sorry saga is examined, it’s clear that the Conservatives – for whatever reason – were always determined this freight terminal would be built.
The district council here in St Albans have refused permission twice – once in the early 2000s, and again in 2012. Instead of allowing an independent Planning Inspector to hear an appeal from the developers, it was Eric Pickles, the Tory Secretary of State, who waded in to overrule them and grant permission in 2014.
It was the Conservative administration in County Hall that sat on legal advice for almost a decade, instead of taking action to investigate whether they could take a different path.
It was this Conservative government that forced the district council to withdraw their Local Plan, which identified the land for affordable housing.
It was the Earl of Verulam – who had sat in the House of Lords as a Conservative – who gave permission to the developer to start work, before they’d sold the land.
Fight The Freight say that it’s likely the planning permission would have lapsed entirely, and the whole plan would have disappeared, if his estate hadn’t cooperated. And at every stage of the decision making process at the county council, the Tories used their majority to vote the scheme through, in the face of unprecedented local opposition.
Even when the Liberal Democrats proposed calling in the sale decision for proper scrutiny just six weeks ago, every single Conservative voted to stop new oversight of the sale – including the Conservative county representative for London Colney, one of the areas that will be blighted by traffic and pollution for decades to come.
Now the Conservative county administration have – literally – sold out, it’ll be the local district council left to pick up the pieces.
Up against a multi-million pound company, Liberal Democrats in St Albans will be working to hold the developers to account, and make sure they stick to the planning conditions. The county have even indicated it’ll be up to St Albans district to make sure the developers don’t try to wriggle out of their financial commitments for highways improvements too.
Since St Albans district council didn’t receive a single penny from the sale, I’ve already asked the government for funding to make sure our local planning teams are well resourced to do this work. Otherwise it’ll be St Albans council tax-payers footing the bill for that as well.
Frankly, this sale is a huge setback. But I’m determined to keep up the fight, and will continue to work with residents and campaigners to discuss the next steps in our opposition to the terminal.”
