10 Sep 2026
An extraordinary meeting of St Albans council has adopted the district’s first Local Plan for 34 years.
The Plan replaces the District Local Plan Review 1994, and follows four years of work by SADC officers and the Liberal Democrat administration.
It allows for the building of 15,000 new homes in the district, but will soon be superceded by another Local Plan reflecting the Government’s changes to the National Planning Policy Framework, which will require more than 23,000 new homes by 2041.
Council leader Cllr Paul de Kort responded to the milestone: “I’m really proud that – in the face of demanding top-down housing targets imposed by the Government – we Liberal Democrats have adopted a Local Plan that will deliver for our area.
“Thanks to this Plan, future developments will include the genuinely affordable, family and starter homes our area desperately needs, which are supported by sufficient local infrastructure and comply with ambitious environmental protections.
“After years of the Conservatives failing to deliver a plan and letting developers run roughshod over communities’ needs, we Lib Dems have embedded the most ambitious targets for social homes, environmental protections and infrastructure that we are allowed to.
“Of course, there are elements of the Local Plan that not everyone is happy about, but we did not shirk from making the tough decisions that were necessary and I am pleased that Full Council has now voted to adopt it.
“Our statutory duty was not to be people pleasers, but to produce a Local Plan that conformed to the law and national planning policies, including the method for assessing housing need, and we have done that as the Planning Inspectors verified.”
The Local Plan includes 1,200 social rent properties and provides for £750 million of new infrastructure including eight primary schools, four secondary schools, public transport improvements, green spaces and health facilities.
Reactions from opposition politicians and campaign groups have been largely critical of the newly adopted Plan.
Green and Independent group leader Cllr Simon Grover said: “After 34 years of waiting, the council finally dragged itself across the finish line, disgracefully the very last competitor in the nationwide race to get a new Local Plan adopted. There is nothing to celebrate here. Not only did we finish last, we behaved disgracefully during it, and received several public scoldings from the race adjudicators. Each time we attempted to pass the baton to a team mate, we dropped it and were sent back to the beginning to start again.
“Most disgracefully, the Plan itself is, by the Lib Dems’ own admission, only ‘good enough’. The ambition has been simply to get a Plan of some kind passed by the inspectors. If that means concreting over the Green Belt then that’s fine, it seems. The council’s reputation is in tatters, a sorry last gasp for an institution that is likely to be abolished in the next couple of years.
“The Conservatives and Labour can take no comfort from this either. The former utterly bungled their own leg of the race when they ran the council, failing to get a Plan through. And the latter are responsible for the insane and arbitrary housing targets that have been imposed, and then doubled, by central government.”
Conservative group leader Cllr Matt Cowley said: “The vote last night wasn’t a vote between this Local Plan or no Local Plan, it was a vote on whether this council should adopt the Local Plan or whether we should allow Westminster to impose it upon us. Those are both bad outcomes for our residents.
“Our Conservative team fundamentally disagree with the decisions that the Liberal Democrats have made. At every stage of their seven years of dither and delay, they have failed to take the hard choices, leaving our Green Belt unprotected whilst our district simultaneously faces a housing crisis.
“The Plan passed last night is merely a placeholder, giving developers pretty much everything they want until a new Local Plan can be passed to meet the much greater housing targets Labour have imposed on us. We already know that this new Plan won’t bring strong protections from speculative development until Autumn 2027 at the earliest.
“Now that the debate on this Plan is over, our Conservative team will turn our attention to scrutinising the much harder Plan the district now has to develop.”
Labour group leader Cllr Mike Hobday and fellow councillor Emma Turnbull voted against the Plan, even though they supported the house building target, because of what they said was an unfair burden being imposed on London Colney.
“The administration rejected the idea of building homes on abandoned parts of the Riverside Industrial Estate. They rejected the idea of building homes on previously developed land at and adjacent to the Pastoral Centre in Shenley Lane. Instead, they chose to place 425 homes on prime agricultural land – on the village green belt at Shenley Lane, south of Napsbury Park.
“Furthermore, the Plan proposes to designate the village of London Colney as a town for planning purposes. We all know what that label signals for future development pressure across the community.
“This Plan makes the wrong choices. Every single strategic allocation, every large site, every medium site is on Green Belt land. This Plan allocates nearly 11,000 homes on the Green Belt, representing 65 per cent of all housing to be delivered in this Plan period.”
Gee Smedley, from campaign group CLASH, fighting against developments in north St Albans, said: “This new Local Plan will not stop ‘speculative’ development. The next Local Plan process has already started, so it is smoke and mirrors saying that not voting for this Plan leaves us open to a free-for-all. This Plan will not provide any protection against the new NPPF. It was out of date before it was submitted and will not protect in appeal situations.
“The call for sites in this new Local Plan could have delivered more than 75,000 houses. The issue is that the sites that have been chosen are were not assessed properly against the sites not chosen.
“The Local Plan documents have been improved by many campaign groups through the various consultations but they have consistently been blocked by lead councillors from the Lib Dems at planning policy meetings.”
New Greens campaigner Damian Gaskin set up an ePetition calling on the council to reject the Local Plan on the grounds that it lacked creativity and innovation in its approach to meeting housing need, which was signed by 611 people.
He said after Wednesday’s meeting: “Given the political arithmetic, I don’t think anyone seriously expected the petition to overturn the Local Plan at the 11th hour. With 39 Liberal Democrat councillors voting for the Plan, the outcome was never seriously in doubt.
“But 611 people signed the petition and more than 50 people turned out to protest peacefully, sing and chant outside the Civic Centre. That shows there remains very significant concern about what is being proposed.
“My concern has never been about whether we build homes. We desperately need more social housing and genuinely affordable housing. We also need homes designed for the climate we are now facing — homes that stay cooler in increasingly hot summers and warmer in winter, with technologies such as solar power and heat pumps incorporated as standard wherever appropriate.
“The question is whether St Albans has been sufficiently ambitious and imaginative about how and where we provide those homes before permanently sacrificing more of our natural environment.
“The Inspectors concluded that the Plan was sound with main modifications. But the point I made to councillors is that ‘sound’ and ‘excellent’ are not the same thing.
“If I were putting it in school terms, St Albans got the equivalent of the Grade 4 needed to pass the exam. We didn’t produce the Grade 9 plan our district deserved. There are no A-stars being handed out here.
“Now the Plan has been adopted, every major planning application must be scrutinised properly. Promised infrastructure, affordable and social housing, environmental mitigation, transport measures and the requirements introduced through the main modifications must be followed through when individual sites come forward.
“And ‘affordable’ must mean genuinely affordable to ordinary people. Twenty per cent off a house that most local families could never afford in the first place does not magically make it affordable.
“There is also a bigger opportunity ahead. St Albans has already started preparing another Local Plan, intended for adoption in 2029. We should use that opportunity to be far more ambitious about brownfield land, regeneration, appropriate higher-density development and making better use of land that has already been developed.
“What impressed me most on Wednesday night was the public engagement. More than 50 people came together peacefully outside the Civic Centre. People sang and chanted for their communities, farmland and food production, clean water, chalk streams and our natural environment.
“Whatever your view of the Local Plan, that is local democracy and community participation in action.
“The vote has happened. The important question now is: who is going to scrutinise what happens next?
“We cannot allow major issues simply to be pushed into the future on the promise that they will be dealt with later through planning conditions.
“When applications come forward, residents and councillors need to ask before permission is granted: Where is the infrastructure? Where are the genuinely affordable homes? How will the roads cope? Where is the water coming from? Will this mean even more sewage in our rivers? What are the environmental protections? And are the climate commitments actually enforceable?
“Those questions need proper answers at the application stage, rather than assurances that everything can be resolved afterwards.
“The promises and safeguards that helped make this Plan ‘sound’ must not quietly disappear when individual planning applications are submitted.
Cala homes is a prime example. Across St Albans they appear to have not adhered to even the basics of flooding and highways conditions and the council seems to have let them get away with it. How can this be the right methodology to deliver sustainable development?
“Adopting a Local Plan isn’t the end of public scrutiny. In many ways, it’s where the most important scrutiny begins.
“St Albans deserved an excellent Local Plan.
“In my view, what we have instead is an unimaginative and mediocre Plan at precisely the moment when the housing crisis, climate change and pressure on our natural environment demand exceptional thinking.
“We can — and must — do better next time.”
