The Elstree and Borehamwood Neighbourhood Plan will explore:

Housing

We will include a policy that will set out the type of homes that should be delivered locally, that will meet local housing needs.

To support this, the Steering Group has commissioned a Local Housing Needs Assessment to be prepared for our local area. This will explore our population – now and in the future – our current housing stock and issues of affordability in order to set out what sort of housing we will need to deliver in the future.

We can influence the size of homes (e.g. number of bedrooms), the tenure of homes (e.g. market versus rental), the affordability of homes and so forth.

The Local Housing Needs Assessment is being prepared at no cost to the Town Council as it is paid for using government grants.

We are not looking to allocate homes here as this will be done through the Hertsmere Local Plan.

Access the Local Housing Needs Assessment by clicking here.

Design of Development

We are preparing a detailed Design Guide for our area. This will include details on local character, materials, colours, layouts, use of green space, provision for parking, sustainable features and so forth. It will add more detail to existing guidance, which is not specific to our area.

The Neighbourhood Plan will require all new developments to consult and adhere to the guidance.

Our policies will also encourage developments to find ways to mitigate the impact on climate change, for example by supporting on-site energy generation, use of renewable materials and thermal insulation.

Conserving local heritage

Many of our local buildings are protected by way of a national listing, but there may be others that don’t meet the threshold for this, but which are nevertheless important locally. We can identify these in our Neighbourhood Plan so that their heritage value is fully considered should a planning application come forward affecting the asset.

Green Spaces and Biodiversity

It is important that we provide green space – for recreation and also for flora and fauna.

The Neighbourhood Plan will identify green spaces that exist already and that we do not want to lose because they are special to us. We will provide a map here shortly showing the spaces that the Steering Group have mapped and those expressed to us by the community within the Community Survey.

We will also map out what we might describe as our key green environmental features (trees, hedges, ponds etc.) and the corridors of greenery that connect them together. This will provide the backdrop to developers of our green landscape that should be maintained and – where possible – enhanced and better connected.

Community Facilities

Our Community and Youth Questionnaires, alongside our meetings with individual groups and organisations around the area, are providing helpful insight into the sorts of facilities and amenities that are needed and wanted locally. For instance, teenagers tell us that there is not enough to do locally and further facilities are required.

Our Neighbourhood Plan will set this out formally so that any major development that comes to the area knows what sort of facilities to deliver alongside, that will address our needs.

Getting Around

We’ve had a lot of feedback on speeding traffic, congestion, parking on pavements etc. – lots of issues caused by cars! Clearly we don’t want to stop people using their cars, but one area we can influence is making it safer, easier, more accessible and more pleasant to walk – and ideally cycle – around the area, particularly for shorter journeys.

We are creating a map showing where the problem areas are and potential solutions to this. We’re working with Hertfordshire County Council on this too, who are in the process of preparing a Cycling and Walking Plan for the town.

Our plan can influence this to make sure that any funding is directed to those areas that are of most importance to local people. This might be improving signage, widening paths, creating additional paths and linkages, planting areas to make them more pleasant, providing secure cycle (and buggy) parking and so forth. For car users, we want to enable people the choice of using electric vehicles so our Design Guide will encourage charging points to be provided in all new development.

Local jobs

It’s not easy to influence the provision of local jobs but we are talking to local businesses and agents to find out what would be most helpful to them and to find ways to support this through the planning system.

GET INVOLVED! If any of the topics above are of interest to you, please contact us as we’d love to hear from you. ajeardley@btinternet.com