St Albans today
St. Albans is a historic city renowned for its rich historical heritage and vibrant community. Only 20 miles north of London, it is one of the best-connected places in England, and boasts excellent transport links with frequent train services to London, Brighton, Bedford and Luton. Major road networks, including the A1, M1 and M25 motorways, are easily accessible.
It is a thriving hub of employment opportunities, with a diverse economy encompassing finance, retail, technology, and creative industries. The city is renowned for its excellent primary and secondary schools, both state and independent, which consistently achieve top academic results.
However, there is an unquestionable need to build more new homes in St Albans. There has been a chronic shortage in the number of new homes built against measures of identified need; for over a decade, housing completions were only half the required amount. This is not surprising given the age of the current Local Plan (1994), the absence of any replacement and the restrictions imposed by the Green Belt.
St Albans is one of the least affordable places in England with prospective homeowners on median incomes needing to find more than 17 times their annual salary to buy a home. The national average is seven times, which has itself significantly increased over recent years. Outside of London, St Albans has the fifth most expensive private rental cost in the UK.
There is a striking need for more Affordable homes. The most recent Housing Market Assessment estimates a need to provide 443 Affordable homes to rent and 385 Affordable homes to own each year. The actual delivery of Affordable homes falls a long way short of this with no remedy in the short or medium term. Market housing schemes like Woollam Park will deliver 40% of the total as Affordable homes.
What limited housing development there has been a focus on city centre apartments. The consequence is a scarcity of new family housing, a contraction in the number of economically active family groups, people in their 20s and 30s being forced to move away and an ageing population. The evidence indicates a clear need for family housing to redress this.
Previous Local Plan
In 2018 the Woollam Park site was identified as a ‘Broad Location’ in the City & District Council’s draft Local Plan. This allocation reflected the limited extent to which new homes could be provided within St Albans’ urban areas, the relatively limited contribution of the site to the Green Belt and, given its position on the immediate edge of the City, the high degree of accessibility. In collaboration with the City & District Council, we undertook a significant amount of public engagement with the local community which involved workshops and public consultation events.”. Working with the City & District Council, County Council and ward councillors we prepared a draft Masterplan for 1,000 homes that was ultimately presented to the City & District Council’s Planning Policy Committee in July 2020.
Sewell Park
In 2022, the City & District Council granted outline planning permission for 150 new homes on part of the emerging allocation for Woollam Park. This now known as Sewell Park and Cala Homes is currently preparing a Reserved Matters application, intending to start work on site in 2025.
Draft Local Plan for St Albans
In July 2023, the City & District Council published its new Regulation 18 Local Plan (the first draft for public consultation). The Plan’s spatial strategy rightly places the City of St Albans as the pre-eminent focus in the District for housing, employment, services, retail, the nighttime economy, education and healthcare.
It also continues to identify North St Albans as one of the intended locations for growth as a “Broad Location”. The Broad Locations are part of a suite of sustainable development sites required to provide a sufficient amount of good quality housing which meets the needs of all sections of society in sustainable locations.
Brownfield sites and urban development sites have all been considered by the City & District Council, who have continued to conclude that some Green Belt land must be released in order to satisfy the chronic housing shortage.
Meeting St Albans’ Housing Needs
The draft Local Plan recognises that to provide the development land required to meet St Albans’ social and economic needs, some Green Belt land should be released. The City & District Council commissioned Arup to assess the quality of the Green Belt in St Albans District; Arup’s study considered the contribution of individual fields and parcels around the main settlements rather than the overall sites identified in the Broad Locations.
At Woollam Park the fields that have been examined are said to make a strong contribution to some Green Belt functions, but less to others. The Arup Study (2023) is different from the previous SKM Study (2014) which looked instead at the Green Belt function of potential development locations.
Consequently, there is no equivalent assessment by Arup of the overall effect of development at Woollam Park on the Green Belt. The City & District Council have also stressed that the Green Belt study is only one strand of their assessment of suitable sites, with urban proximity, sustainability and deliverability also key.