14 Jan 2025
One of the key platforms of the national Liberal Democrats was a pledge to deliver 380,000 homes per year, one thousand more than the Labour Government’s own target to tackle the deepening housing crisis.
The party wants to take an instrumental role in shaping the Government’s housebuilding agenda, with a focus on sustainability, affordability and benefits to local communities.
But should St Albans be expected to take its fair share of this figure, and how are local Lib Dems working to deliver it?
We caught up with SADC leader Cllr Paul de Kort to discuss the ongoing pressures faced by the administration to fulfil national demands while protecting and maintaining the district’s character.
He clarified the party’s approach: “Liberal Democrats know all too well that there is a national housing crisis and a local one, but we are vehemently against the top-down approach of both the Conservatives and Labour parties. We have always said that our national target would be reached through a bottom-up approach that starts by identifying the number of social homes that every area needs to put an end to homelessness, years-end waiting lists and out-of-area temporary housing, and that would take into account local constraints, such as Green Belt and the impact of nationally-imposed infrastructure projects.
“A critical plank of our Liberal Democrat manifesto was for 150,000 new social rent homes a year nationally: a target that was/is missing from both Conservative and Labour planning commitments.
“Whilst Labour is promising to deliver a planning system that links housebuilding with infrastructure needs, we are yet to see the details of those plans or how they would work.
“We Liberal Democrats are clear that the question should never be whether we would just ‘accept a fair share’ of a top-down centrally imposed target that isn’t right for our area. For us, it’s a question of how to develop a bottom-up planning system that achieves fairness overall – only then would we be able to calculate that number.
“We have always said that a fairer system would be one that tackles the local housing crisis that we have in our area by building the social homes we need, protecting the best of our precious greenbelt, and taking the impact of huge nationally-imposed projects – like the Strategic Rail Freight Interchange and potentially Luton Airport expansion – into account.”
The recently submitted St Albans Local Plan provides for 656 dwellings per annum below the requirements of the revised standard method – so how does he expect to make up this shortfall?
“St Albans district council has put forward the most sustainable locations possible given the mandatory target imposed on us by central Government. Our draft Local Plan is currently under consideration and is based on the mandatory target set by the previous Conservative Government.
“The new Government has raised the future target further, but the council is not expected to consider how to meet these until around mid-2026, as this is when the examination of our recently submitted Plan is expected to finish. We are not expected, by Government, to devote any of our very limited resources to this issue until then. By then we will have the outcome of the Government’s ‘New Towns Task Force’ deliberations which could change the landscape around national and local targets.”
So does this mean that SADC will be committing to a new Local Plan if the current one is adopted next year?
“We will always follow the direction imposed by the national planning laws of the time, but many aspects of the current draft Local Plan will not need renewing as they have been created to deliver new homes in a much more sustainable way than in the past, whether that be in terms of location, density, biodiversity offset or transport infrastructure.
“Another key example of economic sustainability, is its focus on providing more truly ‘affordable homes’ – both smaller, starter homes to purchase and homes for social rent.
“We Liberal Democrats fully recognise that much of the current housing stock in the district is financially way out of the reach for many. This is why we are insisting in our draft Local Plan that 30 per cent of all the ‘affordable’ housing provided by developers must be for social rent.
“This is the maximum that current national guidelines allow, but is frustratingly still way short of what is needed, hence the Liberal Democrats’ national commitment to a social housing target. We will continue to press the Labour Government to provide the funding environment to allow this number to be met.”
One of the key questions being asked locally is how the administration can save the Green Belt around St Albans from further erosion, especially by speculative developers.
Cllr de Kort said that for now the district council has taken all the action it can take to protect itself, namely by submitting a draft Local Plan, which he describes as a major milestone for our area.
“Notwithstanding, under the national planning system, the draft Local Plan is considered only this – a draft – and the Planning Inspector will need to give it due consideration in the proper way. But that process to examine a submitted plan can take many months if not years, and during this time planning authorities such as St Albans district council still have no limited tools with which to shield land that is not earmarked for development in our new draft Plan.
“Ordinarily, as any draft Local Plan passes through the various stages of Inspection, it accrues more ‘weight’ so that we can defend ourselves more strongly. But we Liberal Democrats want that full protection now.
“Accordingly, with St Albans district council having done all it can do at this stage, we are now in the hands of the Planning Inspector and the Government: it is they, respectively, who will determine the pace at which our Plan will be considered and the degree of protection from inappropriate development that our draft Plan will afford us.”
In a bid to provide further protection to the district, both St Albans MP Daisy Cooper and her Harpenden and Berkhamsted neighbour Victoria Collins (pictured above) have made representations to the Government.
Daisy has written to MP Angela Rayner, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, urging her to issue a Ministerial statement directing the Planning Inspector to give SADC’s draft Local Plan more weight from the get-go.
In her letter she set out two compelling reasons for this support.
“First, the district council has done everything possible to meet the new Government’s earlier deadline, imposed by the draft National Planning Policy Framework changes published in July. It would be deeply unfair if the council’s efforts to meet this earlier deadline were not recognised or reciprocated with similarly urgent action by the Government.
“Second, we know that the Government want to see a plan-led system and so does our council. But St Albans district council is facing the prospect of a tsunami of planning applications from developers, trying to ‘get in under the wire’ by exploiting the period between the Draft Local Plan being submitted and approved.
“Developers and landowners have identified 355 separate Green Belt sites across our district on which they want to build – that’s a total of more than 57,000 homes they are seeking to build on our precious countryside. So I urge you to act so we can achieve that plan-led system.”
Victoria echoed her call for support when discussing changes to the National Planning Policy Framework: “The Conservative chaos around the NPPF draft they brought out last year threw the planning system into disarray. Some Local Plans stalled, others took the Minister’s empty promises on protecting the Green Belt at face value.
“[St Albans council worked] around the clock to deliver a Local Plan which will deliver planned housing and infrastructure for local communities… It is crucial that the Government support local council’s hard-fought work to deliver the right housing and infrastructure for local communities and doesn’t send them back to square one to start all over again.”
