FAQs

The Joint Strategic Plan will provide a long-term blueprint for the south west Hertfordshire area to 2050. It will consider and address issues that cross council boundaries and will set out a strategic vision for the area. It will also help guide future Local Plans and strategies by setting out high level policies on topics such as climate change, net zero carbon, infrastructure provision, environmental protection, employment and housing. Once approved, the Joint Strategic Plan will provide a coordinated overarching framework that will guide local decision making on planning matters.

The South West Hertfordshire Joint Strategic Plan will cover the area covered by the South West Hertfordshire partner authorities. These are Dacorum Borough Council, Hertsmere Borough Council, St Albans City and District Council, Three Rivers District Council and Watford Borough Council. This covers the main towns of Hemel Hempstead, Borehamwood, St Albans, Rickmansworth and Watford and surrounding areas. The plan is also supported by Hertfordshire County Council.   For more information and to view a map of South West Hertfordshire, please go here.

The Joint Strategic Plan will help each council to better plan beyond their current Local Plan periods (which currently run to between 2031 and 2038) and into the future up until 2050. Working together like this means the councils will be in a better position to ensure that all infrastructure such as transport, schools, health, and utilities is well coordinated and delivered at the right time together with new homes and jobs. It will also provide a platform for the authorities to work together to tackle climate change and net zero carbon.

Each of the South West Hertfordshire authorities is in the process of updating their individual Local Plans, which currently run to between 2031 and 2038. The Joint Strategic Plan will look further ahead, to 2050, to help provide a longer-term framework for the area.

The South West Hertfordshire authorities have all declared climate emergencies and pledged to work on reducing carbon emissions. The Joint Strategic Plan has an important role to play at a strategic level, by planning for carbon reduction, requiring the more efficient use of natural resources, supporting and promoting the natural environment to mitigate the impacts of climate change, championing more sustainable ways to improve the way we move around, promoting digital connectivity and by supporting technological change.

The Joint Strategic Plan will take into account Hertfordshire County Council’s Local Transport Plan and its future iterations. At its core, the plan will promote ‘active travel’ such as walking and cycling as well as other forms of sustainable transport. The onus will be to encourage people to avoid using their cars, while ensuring that there are realistic and affordable alternative ways to move around.

This document was published for consultation between 5^th September and 4^th November 2022 and marked the first formal plan-making stage for the SW Herts Joint Strategic Plan. This is known as the Issues and Options or Regulation 18 stage consultation.

This consultation was informed by two key pieces of work:

(a)  A ‘SW Herts Your Future’ poll carried out in early 2020.  This successful social media-based engagement generated over 14.5k comments and provided a high level overview of what those who live and/or work in SW Herts like about the area now, and what should be priorities for the future.   The results of this engagement can be viewed at here. 

(b)   A Vision Report prepared by consultants Prior and Partners which was informed by a series of workshops involving officers, elected councillors, key stakeholders and a group of 18-25 year olds.  It also reflected the results of an interactive questionnaire published on the JSP website during November and December 2021, asking what type of future respondents envisaged for the area.  This report is available here.

The consultation document included a question on some potential growth types. These are very high level descriptions of how the area could evolve i.e. through the development of new settlements, focussing growth within existing large settlements or extending development along sustainable transport corridors for example.  

Supporting information currently includes a series of Topic Papers on key planning issues, which summarise what Government guidance requires us to do, and how we expect the JSP to address these issues. There is also the Vision Report prepared by consultants Prior and Partners which explains how the proposed vision and objectives set out in the consultation document has been developed. These documents are available to view on the Background documents page.

Yes.  As required by planning regulations, we published a Sustainability Appraisal Scoping Report to accompany the ‘Realising our Potential’ document. This was prepared by specialist consultants LUC. This Scoping Report has now been finalised and can be found on our Background documents page.

No.  At the current time, as we are not carrying out a ‘Call for Sites.’  We already have a good understanding of land availability through work carried out by the districts as part of their Local Plan processes – albeit this does not cover the full period to 2050.  We also feel that long-term growth options should initially be guided by a consideration of the most sustainable locations, rather than constrained by what land may or may not be currently available.

The ‘South West Hertfordshire – Realising our Potential’ consultation marked the first formal stage of consultation on the SW Herts Joint Strategic Plan. The next stages are outlined on our Programme page. We cannot confirm the precise dates for these next stages yet, as they depend upon the progress of the current round of district Local Plans. Keep an eye here for updates or register on our consultation database and you will be notified when future consultations take place.