The Conservative controlled Borough Council is suspending planning decisions on residential proposals in Dacorum, as a Government report has revealed the amount of damage that has been done to our Chiltern Beechwoods Special Area of Conservation.
The pandemic demonstrated the importance of outdoor recreation, but one only has to look, for example at a very little of the Ashridge Estate, to see the damage.
Landowners such as the National Trust are setting up a mitigation strategy to repair and prevent the damage, and the Council will be able to require developers, both to contribute to the repair, and to provide more natural greenspace in new housing proposals.
Councillor Alan Anderson, Portfolio Holder for Planning at the Council, said “This is vindication for the decision taken by Conservative councillors last year to pause the process for the creation of the new Local Plan, which will guide the development of the Borough to 2038.
This was just one of the many studies commissioned before we felt we could continue any further with the Local Plan process, and will be useful evidence to obtain more greenspace, and to argue we could not meet the housebuilding targets we’ve been set hitherto.
The Liberal Democrats were strongly opposed to the previous stage in the Local Plan process, and if we hadn’t completed that consultation, we wouldn’t have been able to obtain this latest evidence, in addition to the consultation responses, to fight Dacorum’s corner.
The Council will continue to receive and process planning applications, but decisions on new housing schemes including conversions are suspended until the mitigation strategy is in place.
UPDATE - 31st March 2022
It would seem that any planning application that's not been granted planning permission is now on hold. That includes LA-1 and the speculative application along the Leighton Buzzard Road, near Piccotts End.