27 Aug 2024
Vanessa Gregory was a prolific letter writer to various local newspapers before championing the importance of the right design for developments in St Albans. Here she urges caution over the district’s forthcoming Local Plan.
Both my husband and I were born in St Albans, my family came from St Albans and lived until they died in rented accommodation. My parents-in-law came to St Albans after the war and were lucky to get enough money together to buy, but had to take in a lodger to make ends meet. My husband and I married in the Abbey where my parents had married. I had dreaded the fact it looked as though even with two incomes, my husband working in London we would be forced to leave St Albans.
We were both devastated. However we were two of the lucky few who did manage to get on the housing ladder. Most of our friends from school days couldn’t afford to stay and moved further afield. We didn’t have children and it looks like we will be able to end our days in the city we both love.
However to this day we miss being able to see our long-standing friends as often as we would like.
When I read on social media the many people who have had to move further and further afield because they couldn’t afford to stay and keep their social connections, but still hold this place as home, I admit I have a pang of guilt. Made worse when their parents still live here and their children often have to travel miles to visit or when a medical emergency arises and they want to be nearby.
A number of years ago a politician said to me they did not believe anyone had a right to live where they choose. Many hold that view. People leave St Albans for many reasons; however, many feel they at least would like to have a choice where they live.
However it’s not just those who were born here, or have lived here for many years that have connections, but also those who serve this community, be they nurses, doctors, those who work in social care or serve in our local shops for example. Shouldn’t they have an opportunity to live here too?
I’m certainly far from hostile to people who have moved to St Albans. I very often enjoy listening and hearing what they love about the city we share. They bring innovations, nothing ever stays the same, change is a constant.
However it’s how we manage that change and one of the most pressing issues, long argued over is a new Local Plan to replace what is the oldest Local Plan in the country from 1994.
What else happened in 1994 to put that in context? The late Queen and France’s President François Mitterrand formally opened the Channel Tunnel on May 6 1994. Four Weddings and a Funeral was released in the cinema and Sony unveiled its very first PlayStation.
Given that Local Plans should be reviewed regularly ours is spectacularly out of date. Since a new version was voted down at Full Council at the end of 2011 we have seen one – or is it two? – further attempts which never got past the Planning Inspectorate. The party-political noise and blame game dims my mind to the sorry details.
So here we are in 2024, 30 years after our last adopted Local Plan and still the political infighting hasn’t changed, as we saw through the leaflets posted through our doors for the May election and repeated to some extent at the General Election in July.
In the meantime many St Albans residents have been up in arms about the new homes mainly given permission by appeal, because we haven’t got an up-to-date Local Plan should we need reminding. We need four and five bedroom executive homes like a hole in the head with the bare minimum of affordable homes in any development.
In a recent report taking figures from the Office of National Statistics the average cost of a home in St Albans is £640,000. That is nearly 18 times the £36,353 average earnings people here make.
Though those figures may be contested by some they are pretty close to other similar reports. With many young people also facing student loans to pay I think you would need a heart of stone not to feel for their plight.
We have very little control, if any, where new homes should go and it is not surprising that many people are angry at being ‘done to’ not ‘done with’. We feel powerless, the designs don’t have the look and feel of St Albans, they could be St Anywhere!
The Labour Party made it abundantly clear before the General Election that building new homes was a priority of theirs.
They have been swift out of the blocks with a new draft National Planning Policy Framework for which the consultation ends next month and new housing targets are again out for consultation.
The leader of St Albans district council is minded to push ahead to what is known as Regulation 19 consultation, that is the statutory consultation ahead of submitting to the Planning Inspectorate.
He is mindful that St Albans is pretty infamous about its elderly Local Plan, so much so that previous Secretaries of State have sent the council less than friendly chivvying letters to get on with it.
However there are some potential rather meaty flies in the ointment, such as the newly proposed housing targets which will require 50 per cent to be ‘affordable’.
I know that term can be annoying as what is affordable around here? Well, the chances are more genuinely affordable, though not all. Not to mention the whopping new target of 1,544 new homes per year from 885.
Do note only 411 were actually built in the area last year. House builders do have a reputation, deserved or not, of only building so many a year not least to keep prices higher.
Should the leader of the council press on then another issue is that if the draft Local Plan goes through Regulation 19, there is a significant gap between the new housing requirement and that in the draft Local Plan, 659 to be exact. Local authorities will be asked to rework their Plans to take into account the higher figure.
Finally on a more hopeful note the time St Albans has to redraft has been extended to December 2026 rather than summer-autumn of 2025.
his also gives others, including stakeholders, more time to properly assess the infrastructure needed. Not a small point.
I understand the anger about building on the Green Belt, but what we have at the moment is speculative development, it’s not part of a grand plan or more to the point a Local Plan that WE have helped shape.
Don’t blame the planning department please, they have a thankless task. In 2021 the East of England Local Government Association talent bank conducted a review of the Plan making governance in St Albans. It didn’t make for happy reading. They reported back that the council needed to resource both in staff and budget to ensure a Local Plan was prepared in a timely manner.
If that has happened then we should feel more confident that this time the officers will offer the leader of the council sage advice, even if it isn’t what he wants to hear.
