A quizzical view of
the Council's emerging 'Strategy' for the City
by Peter Trevelyan (Chairman St Albans Civic Society).
RSA meeting 31 October 2009
In this talk I examined the Council's Emerging Core Strategy and the City Vision project, both of which had recently been the subject of extensive public consultation. The overlapping purposes are described as "to set out the planning policies for the future of the District to 2026” (Core Strategy) and provide “an over-arching vision for the future of St Albans to 2030 ” (City Vision). Both documents are "part of a package which will determine how St Albans develops over the next 20 to 30 years".
The Government's declared aim with the new development process was to speed up plan preparation. The new documents have to replace the Structure Plan, which ran to 2011, and the Local Plan, which ran to 2001, both of which are obviously time-expired. Here in St Albans, the Core Strategy first saw the light in May 2006, the second draft was released in July 2007, and the third (current) draft was published in July 2009. The final version is timetabled to be adopted by June 2011 - a duration of 5 years and more than ten years late!
I explained that these new plans are welcome and essential, but felt that (1) there are significant internal contradictions, (2) there are no 'policies' in the draft Core Strategy and (3) it will be difficult (or very difficult in the light of the country's financial situation ??) to deliver the promised 'developments'.
the Emerging Core Strategy
As an example, the first Strategic Objective (SO1) is an over-riding priority is to protect the Green Belt ... ”. However, this is flatly contradicted by SO3 which proposes the release up to 180 hectares of GB land for housing, schools, employment, and leisure development.
The Council aims to “protect natural and historic assets ... ” (SO2) but Council intends to “promote the city centre ” (SO8), “establish St Albans as a regional cultural hub ” (SO5), and “provide more affordable homes ” (SO6). How is this this to be achieved without losing or harming historic assets in the city centre?
The document says “the Core Strategy policies will provide the overall policy direction ...” However, nowhere in the document are there any 'policies'! Will the final version going to contain policies and, if so, is the public to be consulted about them?
Housing
One hundred hectares of open GB land is allocated for housing development in the Core Strategy. The chosen location to the SW of City is remote from the city centre and community facilities, where it will be reliant on road transport. Further land would have to be released for new school(s) and other infrastructure elements.
I questioned whether this was a sustainable solution. More fundamentally I asked if it was sensible to spread housing development evenly across the region and whether it was right that a historic city should have to accommodate more and more housing, without regard to the damage to its historic assets? So far as I could tell, this debate has not taken place, and regional policy appears to have been set by diktat.
Historic environment
The Council proclaims “The built and historic environment is at the heart of sense of place, local identity and sense of place ”. However, last month the Council disbanded its conservation and design team and made its one architect member redundant. The rumours are that developers are delighted!
City Vision
This document contains much vacuous and meaningless prose. For example, its 'Vision Statement' reads: “Integrated living for 2020: a creative and pioneering city for all which values the past and embraces the future ” I am at a loss to know what this means.
That said, there are useful ideas in the emerging Masterplan. These include a Green Ring for the City, other public realm suggestions for routes and city centre, and two modular options (shades of Monopoly!) for the two key city centre development sites.
The City Vision project has been a quick and stimulating exercise. Consultation and public involvement has been effective. There have been positive ideas for all to consider and debate, and the result should help to control and discipline speculative commercial development.
Conclusion
The process has been slow and laborious. Some key issues (eg. climate change) have hardly been addressed. The stress of meeting development targets will be much greater in a historic Cathedral City than other towns and cities in the region; is it right that these assets should be put at risk in this way? Finally, delivery seems doubtful.