Stevenage is a town that is under-bounded (that is, the urban area is larger than its administrative area) and new suburbs have been developed in neighbouring districts since the 1990s. Metropolitan Green Belt tightly rings the urban area.
To the west, north and south Stevenage Borough is bounded by North Hertfordshire District, based in Letchworth Garden City, whilst its neighbour to the east is East Hertfordshire District, based in the county town of Hertford.
Proposals for major housing development to the west of the A1(M) at Stevenage have a long provenance.
Successive governments first commissioned from the Stevenage Development Corporation, and then rejected, proposals for major new housing areas on 1,450 acres to the west of the town between 1962 and 1965. There was vigorous local opposition to these proposals.
A new government commissioned even larger expansion proposals in 1972 (up to 4,000 acres, primarily to the west of the town) but then abandoned them in 1974 before even a public inquiry. Again, there was substantial local opposition to these plans.
The current proposals for development to the west of the A1(M) stem from the Hertfordshire Structure Plan, work on which began in 1994. When adopted in 1998 it contained Policy 8 which allocated land for 3,600 homes by 2011 (1,000 within Stevenage Borough and 2,600 within North Hertfordshire District) as part of a first phase of 5,000 homes, some of which would be built after 2011. Once again, this expansion proposal proved to be contentious.
Policy 8 also envisaged a possible second phase of 5,000 further homes ~ the whole 10,000 homes to be accommodated in an area broadly bounded by St Ippolyts, the A1(M), Langley/Newton Wood and the B656. [This policy of the Structure Plan has since been rescinded].
Land within Stevenage Borough was removed from the Green Belt to accommodate this scale of development by the Stevenage District Plan Second Review of 2004. Land in North Hertfordshire District has never been removed from the Green Belt to allow the Stevenage West development to proceed.
Following conflicting evidence at the Stevenage local plan inquiry about the capacity of Hertfordshire’s towns to meet the county’s projected housing needs, the District Plan Second Review allocated land for housing development at Stevenage West on only a contingent basis.
This contingency was met when the East of England Plan was adopted in May 2008. Policy SV1 identifies the need for a development of at least 5,000 homes to the west of Stevenage (and other development to the north to fulfil the town’s designation as a major sub-regional growth point).
In July 2001 the West Stevenage Development Consortium lodged identical outline planning applications for 5,000 homes and ancillary development with both Stevenage Borough Council and North Hertfordshire District Council. In the same month the Consortium lost their High Court challenge to the decision of the District Council to withdraw the emerging North Hertfordshire Local Plan No.3, which would have removed land from the Green Belt to accommodate the development west of Stevenage.
In September 2001 the Consortium lodged identical outline planning applications with both Councils for 3,600 homes and ancillary development. [It should be noted that the 3,600 homes development is subsumed within the 5,000 homes development, and is not in addition to it. The two pairs of applications were designed to address the wording of Policy 8 of the Hertfordshire Structure Plan.]
The two pairs of planning applications were ‘called-in’ by John Prescott as First Secretary of State at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister for his own determination in November 2002. This meant that neither the Borough nor District Councils could grant or refuse planning permission themselves. Nonetheless, the Borough Council decided that it would have approved both of the applications lodged with it, had it been in a position to do so.
As a consequence of the call-in decision, a major public inquiry into the four applications was held in Letchworth between January and October 2004.
After considering the Inquiry Inspector’s recommendations, the First Secretary of State refused permission for the two 5,000 homes applications in October 2005. It was considered that they were not in accordance with extant planning policies at the time.
However, at the same time he also stated that he was ‘minded to grant consent’ to the pair of 3,600 homes applications subject to the resolution of various matters, principally revolving around the unilateral undertaking. This had been put in place by the Consortium after it had proved to be impossible to agree a conventional planning obligation for anything other than affordable housing.
It took another four years of negotiation and consultation to build a replacement unilateral undertaking and meet the Secretary of State’s stated concerns.
Finally, in late December 2009 the new Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government, John Denham, granted outline planning permission for 3,600 homes including 990 affordable and special needs homes together with new primary and secondary schools, neighbourhood shopping facilities, business premises and extensive areas of open space and playing fields.
However, in March 2010, North Hertfordshire District Council and Hertfordshire County Council issued legal proceedings against the Secretary of State seeking the quashing of the permission(s). The grounds given for seeking judicial review were, in summary:
- Failure to take account of the up to date Development Plan, or the Secretary of State had failed to give adequate reasons for his conclusions, in respect of affordable housing provision and renewable energy.
- The developers had been allowed to unlawfully opt to pay money to the Councils rather than provide necessary infrastructure, which could mean that the Councils were liable to make up deficiencies in the sum paid; and the Secretary of State had failed to give adequate reasons for his conclusions.
- The provisions in the unilateral undertaking for temporary schools were inadequate and he had misinterpreted the provisions or failed to recognise their deficiencies. Again the Secretary of State had failed to give adequate reasons for his conclusions.
Between 22 and 24 March 2011 this judicial review was heard in the High Court before Mr Justice Ouseley. He handed down his judgement on 20 June. In summary, he quashed [cancelled] the planning permission in respect of grounds 1b and 3 above but upheld it in respect of grounds 1a and 2.
The issue now reverts to the current Secretary of State, Eric Pickles, who will have to re-determine the planning applications to remedy the defects identified by the High Court.
Planning application documents can be viewed at the West Stevenage Consortium’s website:
www.weststevenage.co.uk
Documents for download
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