Local Plan
St Albans City and District Council is developing a new Local Plan, as announced in September 2023. Local Plans are at the heart of the planning system, which makes them important. Here’s the state of play…
Local Plans are the main consideration in deciding planning applications. They set the framework in which decisions on particular proposals are taken locally.
As part of the draft Local Plan consultation process, points raised by the Civic Society and others, including neighbouring local authorities and partner organisations like Hertfordshire County Council’s Highways team, were carefully considered. The main work on this took place during the July-September 2024 Regulation 18 consultation stages.
The draft plan covers a wide area – the whole of the St Albans City and District footprint and there are linked neighbourhood plans for Harpenden and many of the parishes outside the city. Our focus was on St Albans itself and together with a group of central area residents associations we pushed for the draft to include a positive vision for the city.
This has had impact. The draft plan recognises it is vital to provide a framework with the protection needed to preserve or enhance local historic assets, culture and heritage – to be enjoyed and appreciated now and in the future and through periods of change and growth.
Also positive is the emphasis on supporting and managing public spaces, green spaces and sustainable transport opportunities and encouraging business, commercial, cultural and visitor activities, all as part of a focus of community activity and pride.
We raised and discussed many other points during the consultation phases – for instance around highways, education, medical and other infrastructure elements, affordable housing, minimising loss of Green Belt land, discouraging landbanking and so forth. You can read the draft local plan and consultation responses online.
During 2025, the Local Plan team will be working through the examination phase – a process that should be completed by March 2026. Hearing sessions are part of the examination. These are live-streamed and recorded and will be available through till spring 2026. Details are under ‘Hearing sessions’ on the draft Local Plan website linked above.
Local Plan Consultation – our response
Thank you to those members who came to the meeting we held to discuss our draft response and we have submitted a response on behalf of the Civic Society, we also worked with the City Centre Resident’s Associations (CCRA), on their submission. Overall we acknowledge that this is a well researched plan, but are disappointed in that it seems to lack ambition. The Plan is designed to last until 2041 so we would expect a clear picture of what St Albans will be like by then, however this is not evident.
We reluctantly accept, both that there is no alternative to using the Standard method for calculating housing need and that this means inevitable incursion into the green Belt, 81%of the District is Green Belt. However, we expect that once updated figures are available the current figure of 15000 new homes, will be significantly reduced with consequent greater protection of the Green Belt.
Our main concerns relate to the lack of ambition, particularly in relation to the City Centre where, although the draft plan refers to a City Centre Vision, such a vision is absent. Why no reference to urban tree planting or provision of water fountains in the centre? Imprecise and subjective language will not provide clarity on what is expected of developers. Our full response is available here.
Local Plan Consultation – the 2018 version
The Society responded to the St Albans District Council Local Plan consultation concerning the future development of the City from 2020 to 2036. In our response we recognise the importance of a new Local Plan (LP) which is needed, in order to update the previous LP, drafted in 1994. This is, not only to ensure that the authority’s LP is compatible with latest edition of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), published in July 2018, but also that the District Council will not have to relinquish its control, over planning in the district, to Government, because there has been a failure to produce an approved, up-to-date Plan. In October 2018 we made our response is available here and references the Council consultation document