The Future Development of St Albans

St Albans Council carried out consultations last September to see what the public had to say on the future development of St Albans. There were two separate sets of proposals, under the headings of “Shaping our Community” and “St Albans City Vision”: the first looked at the whole of the District, while the second focused on the centre of St Albans (although some of the proposals covered St Michael‘s).

The results of these consultations will be fed into the long-awaited Local Development Framework (LDF). The LDF, which will describe how growth and development in the District should be guided and managed over the next 20 years, is likely to be issued in draft form in mid-2010 and formally adopted in 2011.

Some of the choices in “Shaping Our Community”, if adopted, could have a considerable impact on St Michael’s in terms of traffic and pressure on resources. For example, the Council, while stressing the protection of the Green Belt, envisages releasing some Green Belt land to meet housing development needs. One option is to build up to 1,200 houses on the land bounded by Hemel Hempstead Road, Bedmond Lane and the A414 (formerly the M10).

Another, related proposal is a new “western orbital route”, a new road to take traffic between the A414 and Hemel Hempstead Road, and then along Bluehouse Hill and Batchwood Drive, diverting it away from the City centre.

In the “City Vision”, there was an alarming proposal to build a large new hotel on the garden of “Darrowfield”, between St Michael‘s Street and Verulamium Park. Fortunately, it should never have appeared in the consultation, as it had been rejected at an earlier stage. There is a proposal, though, which still stands, for a “park and ride”, from the car park at the end of St Michael‘s Street, by the Verulamium Museum.

In 2010, St Albans Council will have to make firm decisions on which proposals to adopt. The Society of St Michael‘s & Kingsbury will monitor the process and will take action if there are proposals which seem adverse for St Michael‘s.