Developers eye Bishop’s Stortford and Sawbridgeworth as East Herts Council updates district’s housebuilding plans
Bishop’s Stortford and Sawbridgeworth are braced for more building as East Herts Council (EHC) struggles to supply 1,328 new homes a year in the district.
This week, the authority has published a list of 282 sites across the district submitted by landowners, developers, agents and site promoters as suitable for housing and employment, community facilities, habitat creation and enhancement, and infrastructure.
Between July and October last year, EHC issued a call for sites as part of an update to the District Plan, and 21 locations in Bishop’s Stortford and 12 in Sawbridgeworth were put forward.
In Bishop’s Stortford, the largest proposed development sites are 10 hectares at Twyford Bury Lane and nine at Stortford Park Farm, east of the A1184. In Sawbridgeworth, 29 hectares at Redricks Farm are earmarked along with 48 hectares west of the town.
The Green Party’s Cllr Vicky Glover-Ward, EHC’s executive member for planning and growth, will give the council’s Green and Liberal Democrat cabinet a progress report when members meet next Tuesday (February 11).
The council estimates it needs to provide a minimum of 1,265 new homes a year across the anticipated plan period from 2028 to 2043. Therefore, sites for at least 18,975 dwellings must be identified.
However, the council must also maintain a five-year housing land supply and the Government’s National Planning Policy Framework requires a 5% buffer “to ensure choice and competition in the market”.
This means the overall housing need requirement is currently 1,265 plus 63 – which equals 1,328 new homes per annum.
Cllr Ward-Glover’s report says: “To update the District Plan, a large quantity of underpinning evidence is required to support any strategy that the council will ultimately choose to propose going forward.
“Now that the call for sites has been completed and the information for each submission collated and summarised, the council will use the data to move on to the next stage in the plan-making process.
“This next stage involves utilising the information provided to begin the preparation of a Strategic Land Availability Assessment (SLAA) for the district.
“The SLAA will look at land supply for all types of development, acknowledging the wider spatial objectives of the planning system, and could lead to the future identification of site allocations or broad locations for development.
“It is important to note that the inclusion of a site in the SLAA is an assessment of whether a site could be developed; it does not make decisions about which sites should be developed.”
Even if some of the submissions are allocated within the District Plan Review, each site will still need planning permission.
The council’s planning policy team will now begin an evaluation of each of the 282 submissions.
The locations in Bishop’s Stortford
The sites in Sawbridgeworth