Outrage as supermarket eliminates brownfield housing over lack of viability

We share local residents’ outrage as supermarket giant Lidl persuades the Council that a mixed-use supermarket and housing development with full planning permission is no longer viable but that a supermarket on its own, without any housing, will be viable.

Here at CPRE Hertfordshire, we have long advocated for brownfield redevelopment as a means of providing well-located new homes for local people. This helps protect the countryside for nature and wildlife, for growing our food, and for giving all of us the access to green space that we need for our health and well-being.

So we’ve been keen supporters of the longstanding proposal to redevelop the former Roy Chapman car dealership site on the High Street, not far from the town centre in Berkhamsted, Dacorum Borough.

In 2014 Dacorum Borough Council granted Lidl full planning permission for a supermarket plus 30 flats, of which 10 would be affordable – 7 would be affordable rentals and 3 would be shared ownership. See planning application 4/01317/14/MFA on Dacorum’s planning portal to see all the details.

This is exactly the sort of development that we want to see and that the Government and most local communities want. It’s previously developed ‘brownfield’ land in a location close to the town centre. Many local people in Berkhamsted want a new supermarket, and the new homes are well-positioned within easy, level walking distance of shops, schools, GP surgeries and the rail station.

This is precisely the type of development that has to be made to work if as a nation we’re going to deliver the homes we want without ruining the countryside.

So what’s happened?

Since planning consent was granted in 2014, the site has remained vacant and increasingly derelict. Local residents have grown frustrated at the lack of progress, and are fed up with having to look at the eyesore on their High Street.

Dacorum Borough Council’s publicly available Brownfield Land Register continues to list the site as having full permission, now for a minimum of 32 new dwellings. But still there is no visible progress on the ground.

Local MP queries Council

In February 2025 at the request of a local constituent, MP Victoria Collins queried the Council regarding the lack of progress. She received a reply from Philip Stanley, Head of Development Management at Dacorum Borough Council. The reply was shared with the local constituent, a CPRE Hertfordshire member, who then shared it with us.

The Council reply is astounding. It says that Lidl, the site landowner, has claimed a lack of viability i.e. profitability regarding the provision of the mixed-use supermarket-plus-residential development proposal for which it had sought and been granted permission in 2014.

Further, the letter explains that the Council has accepted Lidl’s argument in this regard. And that instead, Lidl intends to press ahead with a new application for a supermarket only – without any residential provision whatsoever.

You can download and read the Council’s letter here.

Download the Council’s letter

Not a brownfield first approach

This situation is particularly frustrating in the face of the Government’s promise for a ‘brownfield first’ approach to development.

How can a supermarket on its own be more profitable than a supermarket plus 30 homes?! We would like to see the viability calculations that Lidl has submitted and that Dacorum Borough Council has apparently accepted, but these are not available for scrutiny.

The Government has pledged to reform the so-called ‘viability loophole’ by which developers can gain planning permission and then never build based on claims of insufficient profitability. So far this has not happened. And this unwelcome news about Lidl’s development in Berkhamsted demonstrates that developers continue to have the upper hand while at the same time, the Green Belt and wider countryside is being sacrificed for ever-more development.

What can be done?

Our recent annual stock take of Councils’ Brownfield Land Registers shows there is space for a minimum of 29,580 new homes on previously developed land across Hertfordshire. And we think this underestimates the size of the opportunity because it only includes the Councils’ minimum reported figures and only on sites where the landowner has come forward.

We call on all Hertfordshire local authorities to hold developers to account for their promises, and to ensure that identified brownfield sites are redeveloped with the right homes for local people’s needs, before building on green fields and in the countryside.

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