25 Jul 2025
Shirani St Ledger McCarthy, spokesperson for Keep Chiswell Green, reflects on the devastating news that their long-running fight to save the local Green Belt from development may have ended in defeat…
On Friday July 11, the Court of Appeal heard the claim by Keep Chiswell Green challenging the Secretary of State’s decision to approve the development of 721 new houses on 30 hectares of Green Belt land to the west of Chiswell Green village. The judgement was handed down this week; in a devastating blow to local residents, the case has been dismissed.
Last October, Mrs Justice Lang dismissed KCG’s claim to the High Court and decided that the group was not entitled to bring a claim as they had not raised the subject of their claim with the Planning Inspector or the then Secretary of State, Michael Gove, before the decision to allow the developments had been made. The local campaign group argued first that they should not be barred from bringing a claim. Representation on their behalf in the Court of Appeal by barrister Piers Riley-Smith of Kings Chambers succeeded in persuading the panel of three judges that the group of local residents, who have no prior planning experience or legal training, should not be barred from bringing a claim, achieving a win for the group on the first ground of their claim.
However, the Court of Appeal judges did not rule in the group’s favour on their second ground of claim – that the Planning Inspector and the Secretary of State should have taken the Arup Green Belt Review into consideration when making the decision whether or not to permit the developments to go ahead.
Although Mr Riley-Smith succeeded in establishing that the
Arup Green Belt Review was a material consideration and could have changed the Secretary of State’s decision, the judges were influenced by a desire to protect the “finality of decision-making” – the absolute right of decision-makers to exercise their “planning judgement”.
Instead of ruling that the previously-accepted position – that a new consideration had to be material enough that it could have changed the ultimate decision – the judges ruled that the new consideration had to make a radical enough difference that it was likely to have changed the decision-maker’s mind had they considered it; Lord Justice Lewis said in his judgement, “it is not enough that the new matter might be capable of causing a decision-maker to reach a different conclusion. It must be a gamechanger”.
We are devastated by this decision. The judges ruled in our favour on our first ground, and accepted our second ground – that consideration of the Arup Green Belt Review could have changed the decision-maker’s decision on these appeals – but through this ruling, they have now set a much higher bar for claimants to reach – that consideration of the new material would almost certainly have changed the decision. It feels like the judges have given with one hand – accepted that claimants do have the right to raise new material that has arisen after an inquiry has closed – but taken with the other hand – they’ll only accept it if the new material is so radical that it would almost definitely change the decision-maker’s decision.
This is a bar that those opposing planning permissions are unlikely to reach, particularly as the courts are so keen to protect the right of decision-makers to exercise their own ‘planning judgement’. Our experience over the last 3.5 years has shown us that most decision-makers are biased – some in favour of the Green Belt, but most in favour of building, so realistically, almost any new information that comes to light after an inquiry closes will not be admissible any more, no matter how relevant to the situation. This ruling essentially gives unfettered licence to all decision-makers – from planning officers to the Secretary of State – to make whatever decisions they fancy.
What is even more galling in our case is that the elected members of SADC refused planning permission for both developments, but “the council” – the paid officers – did not back that decision. They did not support the elected councillors to reflect their reasons for refusing the developments in the official decision notice and only fielded a limited team at the Inquiry.
More importantly, the council did not then participate in any of the High Court or Court of Appeal proceedings, leading the judges at both stages to assume that the council did not submit the Arup Green Belt Review to the Planning Inspector or to the Secretary of State because they believed it was not ‘material’ – ie not significant.
Officers have repeatedly told councillors that the council cannot afford any more legal action, but this is not acting in the best interests of local residents.
Had the officers defended the decision to refuse the Cala and Polo Field sites more robustly, further legal action may not have been necessary.
Support for the SADC inquiry team by Herts county council was also lacking; an officer from HCC apologised to one of the SADC team that they did not do more to support SADC but, referring to the land being donated by Cala to HCC for a possible school, said HCC “just wanted the land”. Surely this amounts to a cash gift to HCC?
Additionally, KCG raised a significant concern with SADC over a potential conflict of interests when the planning officer responsible for the Cala case submitted his recommendation to approve the application; we discovered that Cala had been a client of the company he had previously worked for, and, during his secondment to SADC, his salary was effectively being paid by Cala’s then parent company (L&G, that now has permission to build 550 new houses in Harpenden).
We asserted then that the planning officer’s recommendation arguably might not be impartial. Although everyone we discussed this matter with, including lawyers, agreed with us that his position was not appropriate, the then-monitoring officer at the council refused to entertain our concerns, saying there was no conflict.
Given it was this same planning officer who was still responsible for the applications during the court proceedings, and we have it on good authority that SADC was advised to send the Arup Green Belt Review to the Inspector and to the Secretary of State, we feel highly aggrieved that our local officers are apparently biased and taking matters into their own hands. We are not the only local campaign group to have concerns about the conduct of paid officers at SADC and to believe they may be undermining the decision-making of our elected councillors.
It is well known that Cala is now developing a number of large and controversial sites in the St Albans district to which local residents are overwhelmingly opposed. The apparent support Cala enjoys from the planning officers at St Albans council and the lack of clarity about their relationships with Cala and other developers requires further investigation.
Planning officers work interchangeably for councils and for developers, but without the strict rules governing working relationships that exist in other industries.
Public confidence in the local planning system is at an all-time low and this needs to be robustly addressed by our elected councillors.
The impact of this judgement is catastrophic for Chiswell Green. It gives the go-ahead to Cala Homes and to Headlands Way to build 721 new houses on prime Green Belt to the north and south of Chiswell Green Lane, but will also result in permission being given for a further 1,300 new houses to be built on Green Belt between Noke Lane and Ragged Hall Lane.
Within five years, Chiswell Green will be three times its current size, but with most of the development resulting from speculative development, there will be minimal infrastructure improvements to support the existing and increased population. Even worse, local residents know that some of the so-called “improvements” proposed in the section 106 agreements will only make the situation worse – narrowing the Watford Road for example.
The air quality in Chiswell Green is already dangerously polluted and exceeds World Health Organisation limits on the majority of key measurements; only 20 per cent of the UK has worse air quality than Chiswell Green – the result of our location between the M25, the M1, the A414 and A405.
Our Green Belt is what protects us from the full impact of this pollution, and destroying it can only exacerbate the situation. Furthermore, destroying our Green Belt completely contradicts all the rhetoric about combating climate change, and promoting food sufficiency and nature recovery.
We will not only see the loss of rare and protected species and the loss of food-producing fields through this wanton building spree, but we also predict an increase in local temperatures and an increase in environmental diseases.
There must be some accountability for the decisions that are being made about developments and the consequences these will have for local residents, now and in the future.
The National Planning Policy Framework supports “sustainable development”, defined as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Our district does not need more four- and five-bedroomed executive homes with views over the Green Belt, which is primarily what developers are delivering.
A search on RightMove at any time for properties of this type in the St Albans district typically brings up 300-400 available properties. We do not need more.
What we do need is social rented housing, three-bedroomed houses, bungalows and retirement properties. KCG supported the concept of the retirement village being built at Burston Nurseries, but now the properties are coming to market, it turns out that a two-bedroomed cottage on this complex is going to cost £1.2 million! How is this meeting the needs of the present?
Development on Green Belt land is supposed to include 50 per cent affordable housing, but “affordable” only means a property priced at 80 per cent of the local market value.
For Chiswell Green, this means the average property will be priced at £627,155; buyers will need a household income of £139,367 pa to afford a typical mortgage on a property at this price, when the ONS lists the average household income in the south-east of England as £36,700.
And worse still, the Government provides a well-used mechanism for developers not to fulfil their affordable housing obligations by claiming that they will not make enough profit from the development for it to be worth their while building if they include their affordable housing quota. Inevitably, the developers are excused from this obligation.
We all know the Government is saying they want to build 1.5m houses during this Parliament, but even the building industry recognises this is not possible.
And it is not necessary; a report authored by the Community Planning Alliance and backed by TV presenter and naturalist Chris Packham CBE has identified that there are already 1.5m derelict houses in the UK that could be renovated to provide housing.
There is planning permision already granted for over 1m new houses – these should be built out before any more permissions are granted, especially on green spaces.
There is space on brownfield sites for 1.2m homes – what happened to “brownfield first”? And there are 165,000 disused commercial properties that could be repurposed for housing.
Purusing all these avenues could result in nearly 4m new homes, solving the supposed housing crisis, without destroying our green spaces and without damaging nature or the climate.
This is the real housing crisis in the UK – not the lack of houses, but the endless pursuit of profit by developers who fund politics and drive political impetus.
Proof of this comes from an analysis done by KCG on planning appeals to mid-2024 (just before the election); 80 per cent of planning appeals came from areas with Conservative MPs, 10 per cent Labour, 10 per cent Lib Dem. However, of those allowed (permission granted to build), only 33 per cent of those in Conservative areas were allowed to build, whereas 67 per cent were granted in areas with a Labour or Lib Dem MP.
The needs of future generations are being completely overlooked in this melee. It is ironic that Steve Reed OBE, current Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (and equally ironically born in St Albans) said: “Nature underpins everything – the economy, food, health and society – but we stand at a moment in history when nature needs us to defend it.”
Inspector Boniface, in determining the Chiswell Green appeals, described the housing situation in St Albans as “dire”; this is a gross exaggeration, but if we do not defend nature now, the consequences for future generations will genuinely be dire. And defending nature comes in many different ways.
In the 1950s, when the Metropolitan Green Belt was established in the UK, London was the same size as Los Angeles.
The two cities have grown at much the same rate in terms of population, but while London has been prevented from sprawling due to the Green Belt, Los Angeles now covers an area that is the equivalent of Brighton to Cambridge, and is suffering from an increased incidence of wildfires, heat waves and flooding as a direct result.
It has already been reported to Parliament (March 2024) that insects are vital for our food security; in the south-east alone, natural pest control in wheat fields in the region by ground beetles and parasitoid wasps has been estimated to be worth £2.3 million a year, but declines in insect populations have been recorded at between 39 per cent and 67 per cent, threatening our future food security. If we continue to erode the Green Belt and other green spaces, this will be the legacy we will be leaving for future generations, a situation that poses a real threat to their ability to meet their needs.
Overall, our experience, over the last 3.5 years since KCG was formed, has shown us the mockery that is local government; many of our elected councillors work hard to support local residents and make important decisions representing the views of these residents.
However, their decisions are over-ruled or undermined by council officers who are at best incompetent, at worst in highly questionable alliances with developers, while our council leaders do not hold the officers to account, and treat the views of local residents with contempt.
In the meantime, our Green Belt is being sacrificed for politics – a sad indictment on a supposed democracy in which we, and the generations to come, will suffer the very substantial consequences of decisions being made by developers’ profits and party politics.
