Up to 84 homes, half of them affordable, on a Green Belt field beside Heartwood Forest won outline approval 5 votes to 1, with 3 abstentions. The conditions.
Up to 84 homes can be built on a Green Belt field at the edge of Sandridge, about two and a half miles north-east of St Albans city centre. The council’s Development Management Committee granted outline planning permission on Wednesday 30 September.
The vote was five in favour, one against and three abstentions. That is recorded in the committee’s printed minutes, published this month. The decision notice has not been issued yet, because the permission depends on a legal agreement that still has to be signed.
The application, 5/2025/1556/SSM, is from ACRE SA Ltd and The Salvation Army Trustee Company. Nine councillors were present.
The site
The land sits behind Shottfield Close, off Langley Grove. The officer report describes it as:
- an open field of about 3.9 hectares, flat and roughly triangular
- inside the Metropolitan Green Belt
- bounded to the north by the Hertfordshire Way footpath, with Heartwood Forest beyond
- next to Sandridge primary school and its playing field to the south east
It has no previous planning history.
What the permission allows
This is an outline permission. Only the road access from Shottfield Close is fixed now. The layout, the look of the houses, the landscaping and the scale come later, in “reserved matters” applications that must be made within three years.
The conditions set the limits those later plans must stay within:
- no more than 84 homes
- at least 50% of them affordable
- at least 1 hectare of open space open to the public, including a children’s play area of at least 120 square metres
- no building over 2.5 storeys or with a ridge more than 9.5 metres high
- at least three footpath links from the estate onto the Hertfordshire Way
- full details of the mix of house sizes and tenures, which councillors added on the night
The committee also added a condition asked for by Thames Water. No home can be occupied until a foul water strategy shows the local sewage works can cope.
Why officers said yes to a Green Belt field
Green Belt building is normally refused unless there are “very special circumstances”. Officers instead classed the field as “grey belt”, a category in national planning policy for Green Belt land that contributes less to its purposes. Grey belt housing can be approved if it meets four tests and the government’s “Golden Rules”.
The report concluded the site passes them all. The key one was housing need. The council now has a 5.12-year supply of housing land, which meets the national requirement. But its latest Housing Delivery Test score, published in August 2026, was 46%. That means it built less than half the homes it needed over the past three years. Below 75%, national policy treats housing need as “evidenced unmet need”.
Officers also judged the site sustainable. The nearest bus stop on High Street is about 800 metres away by road, or 400 metres along Footpath 18. Some heritage harm to the Church of St Leonard was accepted as “very minor” and outweighed by the new homes.
The St Albans Local Plan adopted in September does not allocate this site. The Sandridge Neighbourhood Plan was made on 14 July 2021 and allocates no housing sites, so officers treated its housing policies as out of date.
Who objected
Objections came from about 100 addresses, according to the report. The main grounds included the loss of Green Belt, the field’s role as a buffer for Heartwood Forest, traffic on Shottfield Close, and wildlife including skylarks, badgers and bats.
Sandridge Parish Council objected too. Its grounds, as summarised by officers, included:
- the site is outside the village boundary in the Neighbourhood Plan
- traffic, congestion and pedestrian safety
- the bromate plume in the groundwater from the former chemical works near St Leonard’s Church
- poor bus links
It asked that any s106 money be spent only on projects in the village.
The application was called in to committee by three district councillors: Sharon Hollingsworth, who has since left the council, supported by Cllr Simon Johns and Cllr Mackenzie. Their reasons included the grey belt assumption and the recent closure of the village’s only shop. Two members of the public spoke, one for and one against, as did parish councillor Graham Leonard and Cllr Johns.
The skylarks
The committee first looked at the scheme on 3 August and deferred it. Councillors wanted to know where the skylark compensation plots would go.
The answer is Childwickbury Stud, about 3.5 kilometres west. The ecologist assumed the field might hold one skylark territory and asked for two plots, each 4 metres square, left unsown in a cereal field. The landowner has signed a memorandum of understanding, and the plots will be secured for 12 years in the legal agreement.
What the developers must pay
The permission depends on a section 106 agreement. It covers a long list of contributions: schools, childcare and SEND places, libraries, youth services, the fire service, recycling, highways and a travel plan, GP and ambulance services, car club and e-bike schemes, and biodiversity net gain.
On the night, officers added four local sums to the report. Together they come to £405,998, our total:
The highway conditions also require work outside the site before anyone moves in:
- resurfacing Footpath 18, from the site’s east end to Langley Grove, to a 2 metre width
- dropped kerbs and tactile paving where Shottfield Close and Lyndon Mead meet Langley Grove
- raised kerbs and real-time information screens at both “St. Leonards Church” bus stops on High Street
What happens next
The applicants have six months from the meeting to sign the s106 agreement. That takes it to the end of March 2027. If it is not signed by then, officers can refuse the application, unless the chair agrees more time because good progress is being made.
Only once the agreement is signed will the formal permission be issued. Detailed designs then come back as reserved matters applications, each with its own consultation.
What it means for you
If you live in Sandridge, this is the stage to watch the detail rather than the principle. The principle is now settled, subject to the agreement. The reserved matters applications will fix the layout, the house types and where the footpath links go, and you can comment on each one. Search 5/2025/1556 on the council’s planning register to follow it.
If you are looking for an affordable home in the district, half of the up to 84 homes must be affordable as defined in national policy. The mix of sizes and tenures has not been fixed yet.
Across the district, the case matters beyond Sandridge. Officers accepted grey belt housing on a field the new Local Plan does not allocate, on the strength of a 46% delivery score. While that score stays below 75%, other unallocated Green Belt fields can be argued the same way. What else is in the system is on our St Albans planning news page.
Sources
- Development Management Committee, printed minutes, 30 September 2026 (PDF), for the decision, the vote, the conditions, the added contributions, the s106 terms and who spoke.
- Development Management Committee, public reports pack, 30 September 2026 (PDF), for the site, the call-in reasons, the objections, the parish council’s response, the grey belt and housing land supply assessment and the skylark plots.
- Meeting page, Development Management Committee, 30 September 2026.
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