08 Jun 2026
As the hearing date for Keep Chiswell Green’s claim against SADC and developer Taylor Wimpey approaches, KCG has launched a fundraising initiative to raise the funds needed to take the case to court.
Using CrowdJustice, a platform established to help individuals and campaign groups raise money for legal cases, KCG has already raised £7,000 in the four days since the page was launched to their supporters on Wednesday, with new donation pledges coming in daily.
The case, which could have implications for all planning decisions across the St Albans district, focuses on the committee meeting during which Taylor Wimpey’s reserved matters application was approved to build 191 new houses on Green Belt land along Chiswell Green Lane.
Residents had asked for relatively modest protections to be added to the planning permission such as additional boundary fencing and hedging as well as reduced garage heights. However, KCG says that the councillors appeared not to understand what their powers were to refuse or request modification of the application, or to impose conditions to lessen the impact of the design and layout for existing residents, and that officers did not make this clear to the councillors.
As a result, existing residents will have to live with a significant degradation of their residential amenity and quality of life, with some left with only 6m between their homes and new buildings. Now that construction is underway, KCG says the impact on local residents is exactly as they predicted it would be, but without the mitigations they asked for that could have minimised the worst aspects.
With 14 residential developments and three infrastructure projects planned for Chiswell Green, KCG says it is critical that councillors are given appropriate advice when determining planning applications if existing residents are to have any faith in the planning system.
Local resident Barbara Burke said: “I think the people who decide what our lives have become should be ashamed of themselves.”
Another resident, who requested anonymity, responded: “They don’t live here so they don’t care.”
Keep Chiswell Green’s case aims to establish that the advice given to councillors by officers was inadequate and that, had they been more appropriately advised, the committee may have requested other conditions or asked Taylor Wimpey to make modifications to their layout and designs. KCG says that winning the case would help to ensure that SADC properly considers the amenity of existing residents when determining reserved matters applications in future.
Further information about KCG’s case, and details of how to donate to support the fundraising campaign, can be found at https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/keepchiswellgreen-tw/
