27 Aug 2023
St Albans MP Daisy Cooper and council leader Chris White were walking through the bustling crowds at a heaving Charter Market one Saturday morning about a month ago. Traders were touting their wares, customers were jostling for a bargain, and the sunshine blessed the street scene with a golden hue.
Daisy turned to Chris, and dryly quipped: “You’re doing a really bad job of shutting down this market.”
This anecdote captures not only the strong relationship between the Member of Parliament and SADC leader, but it also serves to highlight the flawed argument – bandied about on social media – that the market is being scrapped to make space for large-scale, alcohol-fuelled festivals in St Peter’s Street.
The Charter Market, St Albans Local Plan, Batchwood Hall and city centre road closures were just some of the topics on the agenda during the course of a recent interview with Cllr White examining the key issues affecting the district this summer and in the months ahead.
Cllr White revealed: “The market’s doing great, it’s doing really well. Last Wednesday [August 9], there was a 35 per cent increase on our previous year, and on the Saturday it was absolutely heaving. We had 120 stalls, and we’re getting to full capacity actually. I’m really excited by what’s happening.
“I think a lot of the nay-saying is self-perpetuating, partly it’s what they read on social media, partly people don’t go there, so they listen to what Mrs Miggins say next door.
“It doesn’t come up much, but on the doorstep sometimes people will say ‘It’s always only food shops’ or ‘There aren’t any food shops’! Come and have a look. I went to the Local Government Association conference at the beginning of July and a couple of council leaders came up to me and said ‘Ah St Albans, it’s lovely, the market’s brilliant!’
“People really just have got to talk it up.
“It’s a great thing, there’s no market like it anywhere in the rest of Hertfordshire and probably the surrounding counties as well.”
Cllr White said one of the biggest challenges of recent months has been getting the Regulation 18 consultation on the proposed Local Plan out to the public.
“It’s an incredibly complicated document, there’s been loads of misrepresentation, and there are clearly things people won’t like. If everyone had said ‘Yeah it’s great’, then you’ve screwed up basically. It’s just a consultation, there will come a point where it’s a real thing, but it won’t look like that.”
Much of the emphasis from opposition groups has been on whether housing targets will actually be reduced in line with comments by Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Michael Gove.
“I don’t actually think the government will change the numbers. It could have been done by now, and I suspect there may be a change of government. I mean, you know, call me Mystic Chris, but it is possible. And the Labour noise is that they’re not going to either, but here’s hoping.
“You’re not wrong to think there’s still a possibility the numbers might change, but it’s smaller than it was. I’ll be the first to tell you if I’m wrong, with some delight, actually.
“But Gove needs to put his money where his mouth is. It’s not even a piece of legislation, it’s more or less a letter. It’s an inspector saying ‘Can you use the 2018 figures not the 2014 figures?’ – so where’s the delay?
“But all sorts of things might change. We have the formal responses from the county council, the Highways Agency, which could make a difference. There’s a couple of sites in Harpenden where I’m not wildly convinced by the transport links, so it’s right to put it out to consultation.
“Some sites will be taken out because they’re rubbish and there’s stuff in the margins that will happen.
“I mean, you can’t quite say any Local Plan is better than no plan at all, but it would be helpful to know that if you turn something down because it’s not on the plan, the inspectors will back it, and at the moment they won’t. So it’s a free-for-all at the moment.”
“September is the key time because we have to have formal meetings with all our neighbours, including Central Beds, but our reputation in terms of dealing with authorities is really good now. There’s the South West Herts Joint Strategic Plan which goes up to 2050 looking at broad areas of sites which I chair at the moment, which is quite a good thing to put in front of inspectors if they suspect we’re not talking to other councils.
“The political landscape has also changed. There are now eight leaders or deputy leaders from the Lib Dems out of ten councils in Hertfordshire, which is astonishing. I’ve known the leaders of Welwyn Hatfield and Decorum councils for 20 years, and that just helps with communications.”
At the moment this is not reflected at county council level, but Cllr White believes there will be a regime change come 2025.
“It’s been a while since the Lib Dems have been in charge, or semi-in charge, of the county council. It was 1999 when that last happened with a Lab-Lib administration.”
The St Albans Times recently spent some time in Park Street, talking to residents of Hampden Place about the impact of the rail freight development at the ends of their gardens, and one of the things which came out was their feelings of abandonment and frustration that they don’t know what’s going on.
“The view of the district, speaking carefully, is that at the end of the day the battle has been lost by the county council, or because of the county council, and therefore you’ve got to start talking to the developers.
“I spoke to Segro last year to learn a bit more and they were in total denial that they ever agreed to the Park Street roundabout signalisation, it was a bit shocking, and of course everyone who was in the county council at the time has gone. The massive worry is the A414, both as a road and parking up, which is already a problem. There are no toilet facilities which means the district council has to shall we say clear up the consequences each morning which is horrendous.
“We’ve raised that with the county council and they said ‘Oh yeah it’s very serious, thank you very much’.
“So I think creating some sort of liaison with some local representation would probably be quite a good idea. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and now we’ve moved past the absolute point…
“A judicial review doesn’t normally work, and if it does work, they just say ‘make a decision again, but dot the eyes and cross the tees this time’. It’s not an appeals system. Judges don’t want to get involved.
“It’s whether we need to do something which gives more reassurance. “The danger is, you see, if you start sitting around the table with Segro then people start shouting betrayal and we get nowhere.”
The city centre’s controversial road closures could also be coming to an end soon – at least in High Street.
“I can’t really comment on George Street because it’s incredibly complicated, but once the businesses in High Street fell out of love with it, it was a non-starter there. So at some point in the next small number of weeks, High Street will open up, reserving the right to shut it for special occasions like the Alban Weekend.
“The jury is out whether the traffic displacement really took place. I think a lot of people perceived it did but some of that was traffic coming back after Covid, some of it was just bad driving and so forth. But the whole purpose of the trial was to make this fabulous for all businesses, and of course we achieved that with Market Place.”
After months of delays, Jubilee Square technically completed at the end of last week, and although the cost implications have yet to be revealed, Cllr White is obviously pleased to see the project reach fruition.
“It’s starting to hand over and it’ll be a few more weeks. The fencing is still there, we have some windows issues. The district council is going to fix the roads to speed things along because otherwise you wait for the county council to do it.”
This raises another very important issue for local residents. As we come to the end of the summer, there are still hundreds of pot holes across the district which haven’t been repaired, with no signs of the county highways department speeding up the works.
Cllr White is less than impressed with the response from HCC: “I’ve had a row with them and complained to the chief executive and they sent me a list of their works for next year. There are about 70 sites on it and I said only four of these do I support, the rest are fine. They said this was what the computer had worked out. It’s just astonishing.”
The administration is currently reviewing SADC’s entire capital programme, which covers major redevelopment works like Jubilee Square: “It’s never really been properly looked at. There are still bright ideas in there which need to come out, as opposed to things which will provide more social housing, community services and which are good investments. So there’s more to be done. We’ve got to understand that we’re not property good developers, and therefore sometimes it’s going to be easier to sell.”
On the back of this the administration is also starting to look at next year’s budget to avoid the shocks of 2022, which resulted in a swathe of cuts.
“We had a discussion about transparency, you want to be frank with people and say, you know what, the alternative is horrendous. We had a meeting amongst a number of councillors and senior officers on undesirable alternatives which we aren’t going to pursue, and we hope we won’t be forced into, but they needed to know what suggestions had been rejected.”
There is also some good news for the future of former nightspot Batchwood Hall.
“It’s nearly signed off, it’s going to be a destination hotel. It’s going to be really good. It’s a well-known chain and we’re waiting for the ink to be dry but it’s really close and is the right solution.
“It’ll need quite a lot of work as it’s not been nicely looked after over the years. But that’s on its way, it’s been a long time gestating.”
