Hemel Garden Communities proposals will destroy a huge swathe of Green Belt

‘Hemel Garden Communities’ proposes 11,000 dwellings in a new mixed use development entirely on Green Belt land and adjacent to the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, whose setting also has legal protection.

We are appalled at the so-called Hemel Garden Communities proposals. We believe new development in this location is highly damaging and completely inappropriate.

We have summarised our views here, and we’ve included detailed guidance at the bottom of this web-page on how to submit your own comments.

A meaningless public survey

The Hemel Garden Communities ‘Vision Survey’ is open for public responses until 11 December 2022. However, we think this survey is a generalised statement of urban development objectives with which no reasonable person could possibly disagree, thus rendering it meaningless. To suggest that responses to this survey would reflect peoples’ views on specific development proposals, which take no account of the strong statutory protection of the land affected, is extremely misleading.

Rather than completing this meaningless and misleading survey, we have written an open letter to Hemel Garden Communities and The Crown Estate to convey our very strong objection to their proposals. We urge everyone to do the same, copying in your MP and Town or Parish Councillor. Contact details for where to send your views are listed below on this web-page.

The site is directly adjacent to the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. New development would extend in a wide arc from the hamlet of Piccotts End north of Hemel Hempstead, sweeping around the communities of Grove Hill and Woodhall Farm, and on around towards Redbourn in the east and all the way to Leverstock Green in the southeast.

The land on which this would take place spreads across the boundary between Dacorum Borough and St Albans District Council. Much of the land is owned by The Crown Estate, which states on its website that as a public body it always seeks to “work with the grain of prevailing government policy”. Well, the prevailing government policy is to protect the Green Belt, not sell it off for development.

This indicative map shows the extent of the proposed development; click here for a larger version.

The new development would add 11,000 dwellings in the Hertfordshire Green Belt, even as the latest government data shows that fewer houses are needed. It totally contradicts the government’s recent and oft-repeated pledges to protect the Green Belt. Such protection is explicit in national planning policy and yet proposals to destroy the Green Belt in favour of suburban sprawl continue to emerge.

And with more than £1 million of public money already granted to fund studies for the Hemel Garden Communities proposals, we question why public money is being committed before any development has been justified through the Local Plan process. The release of Green Belt land can never be a foregone conclusion, and it is crucially important that local democracy is not short-changed.

Green-wash

The Hemel Garden Communities vision talks about creating new neighbourhoods and transforming existing ones, to promote healthy lifestyles and respond to the climate crisis, and that these communities will be connected by ‘a green network’. Lovely words, but we think this is ‘green-wash’. The track record of developers throughout the county speaks for itself with tracts of banal car-dependent housing. There is no indication that this would be any different.

Loss of highly valued countryside in the Green Belt

The Green Belt is not an abstract concept, it’s the countryside next door for residents in the local communities who rely on it every day. The Green Belt in the proposed development areas contains many public rights of way which are used for dog-walking, running, and horseback riding. It gives local people much-needed access to nature and wildlife, which helps boost physical and mental health and well-being.

Contrary to climate change mitigation

The vision for the development proposals talks about responding to the climate crisis.  But concreting over this Green Belt countryside means the land can no longer help to mitigate climate change by absorbing and sequestering carbon emissions, hardly the climate crisis response that is needed.

Added pressure on internationally important protected habitats

The Hemel Garden Communities development sites are well within the ‘zone of influence’ of the internationally-important Chilterns Beechwoods Special Area of Conservation (SAC). The SAC is protected by law, and is already suffering damage from the pressure of high visitor numbers to such an extent that mitigation measures are being imposed. The rare habitats of the SAC will inevitably be further damaged by this huge development.

Contrary to the UK’s food security strategy

Developing this huge swathe of Green Belt will take an enormous amount of productive agricultural land out of food production, at a time when the government strategy is to increase domestic UK food production and improve our food security.

Worsen the already over-stretched road network

The huge areas proposed for new development are three to four miles away from the nearest rail stations, and while the vision talks of new bus routes, it’s difficult to see how these will be anything other than car-dependent, adding to the already-congested local roads.

Worsen other already-overloaded infrastructure

Based on ONS data for average household size, 11,000 new dwellings will add 26,510 more people to the local population. This is the equivalent of an entire new town that would be 25% larger than the whole of nearby Berkhamsted. It will increase the population of Hemel Hempstead by 30%. This is an astonishing and unwarranted level of growth that will further over-burden much of the local infrastructure, including healthcare and education. And according to the most recent Hertfordshire Water Study, there is unlikely to be sufficient clean water supply without “strategic intervention” i.e. massive new investment.

And there is the issue of poo

The existing sewerage infrastructure is “a major constraint to development, requiring extensive infrastructure improvements to allow development (possible showstopper at this stage…).”  This is according to the Water Cycle Study included in the evidence base for the most recent Dacorum Local Plan consultation in early 2021. It goes on to state that “the potential growth locations around Hemel Hempstead may require extensive upgrades to the sewerage network throughout the existing settlement.” And that such upgrades would be disruptive and hugely expensive.

To be fair, the Hemel Garden Communities concept includes regenerating the existing built-up area of Hemel Hempstead to improve and better integrate existing neighbourhoods, and this we support.

But the regeneration of Hemel must not be at the expense of the wider countryside and the Green Belt. The huge extent of the proposal means that historic settlements including Piccotts End and Leverstock Green will be engulfed by urban sprawl. This is totally contrary to the core purposes of the Green Belt as enshrined in national policy: to prevent urban sprawl and prevent the coalescence of existing settlements.

Contact details for Hemel Garden Communities and The Crown Estate

You can read about the Hemel Garden Communities proposals at

https://www.hemelgardencommunities.co.uk/

We encourage you to send your comments to the Hemel Garden Communities team hosted by Dacorum Borough Council, and to The Crown Estate, which is a partner in the proposals. We suggest also copying in both your MP and your local Town or Parish Councillor.

Hemel Garden Communities, The Forum, Marlowes, Hemel Hempstead HP1 1DN

Email:  hello@hemelgardencommunities.co.uk

The Crown Estate, 1 St James Market, London SW1Y 4AH

Email:  enquiries@thecrownestate.co.uk

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