Officers recommend approval for up to 100 homes on Green Belt land at Stanborough, despite 120 objections. Welwyn Hatfield's committee decides on Thursday 10 September.
Council planning officers have recommended approval for up to 100 homes on Green Belt farmland at Stanborough, on the western edge of Welwyn Garden City. The application drew 129 representations, 120 of them objections.
Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council’s Development Management Committee decides the application on Thursday 10 September. The meeting starts at 7.30pm in the Council Chamber at the Council Offices, The Campus, Welwyn Garden City, and will be webcast.
The site is 9.19 hectares of agricultural land north of New Road, between existing houses to the east, south and west. Only 3.96 hectares would be built on. The remaining 5.23 hectares to the north would be kept as open countryside for wildlife.
The applicant is Stanborough Estates Ltd, care of Dandara. This is an outline application, so only the access from New Road is fixed at this stage. Layout, scale, appearance and landscaping would all come back later in a reserved matters application.
What is proposed
The officer report sets out the main parameters:
- up to 100 homes, of which at least 50 would be affordable
- an affordable tenure split of 51% social rent and 49% intermediate housing
- mostly two to two and a half storeys, with a smaller area allowed up to three
- a new vehicular, cycle and pedestrian access off New Road
- a further pedestrian and cycle link east to the A197 Great North Road
- 5.23 hectares north of the site retained for biodiversity
The 50% affordable figure is not generosity. Under the revised National Planning Policy Framework published in August 2026, major housing schemes in the Green Belt must meet a set of “golden rules”. Where a council has no existing requirement in place for released Green Belt land, a 50% affordable contribution applies by default.
Why officers say yes
The site is washed over by the Green Belt and Stanborough is classed in the Local Plan as a small Green Belt village and settlement, where development is normally restricted. Officers still conclude the scheme is not inappropriate development, because it satisfies the NPPF’s grey belt test in Policy GB7 and the golden rules in Policy GB8.
Two findings carry that conclusion. The report says the council’s Annual Monitoring Report for 2023/24 confirms it does not have a five-year housing land supply. It also notes that when the current Local Plan was examined, the inspector put the borough’s full housing need at 15,200 dwellings for 2016 to 2036, against only 13,400 dwellings’ worth of opportunities on sites in the plan.
The report goes on to say the replacement plan will raise the annual requirement from 760 homes to 840. That does not match the council’s own draft. The Regulation 19 Local Plan published on 25 August uses the government’s standard method to put local housing need at 822 homes a year, about 14,796 by 2043. Two council documents published a fortnight apart give different figures for the same requirement.
Officers are blunt about the location. They describe an area “where accessibility by non-car modes of transport is currently poor”, with the nearest shops about 2km away at Oldings Corner retail park, reachable mainly by car. The nearest bus stop is 650 metres south on the B197, served by the half-hourly 302 between Hemel Hempstead and Welwyn Garden City.
Their answer to that is money for buses. Hertfordshire County Council dropped its highways objection in return for a package secured through a Section 106 agreement.
What the developer would pay
The heads of terms, agreed in principle between the council and the applicant, include:
- £182,240 a year for five years, £911,200 in total, to fund a new bus service between Welwyn Garden City and Hatfield’s Parkhouse bus station
- £167,200 to the NHS, to be spent on one of five named local surgeries, including the Hall Grove group, the Hollybush Lane branch of the Peartree group, Spring House Surgery, the Hatfield town centre practices and Garden City Practice on Birdcroft Road
- £28,750 over five years towards managing Lemsford Springs nature reserve
- £6,280 to £21,374 for bus shelter maintenance, depending on the shelter design
- £7,515 to monitor biodiversity net gain
- £1,200 a year for travel plan monitoring, plus travel vouchers of £100 per house and £50 per flat
New bus shelters, off-site pedestrian improvements and traffic calming on Brocket Lane would be delivered separately through a Section 278 highways agreement. The site also sits in CIL Zone 2, so the development attracts a Community Infrastructure Levy charge of £140 per square metre, calculated at reserved matters stage.
The scheme is expected to deliver about 28% net gain in habitat units and 15% in hedgerow units, against the 10% legal minimum.
What objectors say
The 120 objections cover ground familiar from every Green Belt case in the borough. The report groups them under headings including parking stress, traffic, overdevelopment, loss of open space and trees, harm to wildlife, loss of Green Belt land, pressure on local infrastructure, insufficient capacity at local primary schools, dangerous road conditions, flood risk and loss of amenity for neighbours. Several objectors say Stanborough is not a sustainable location and that the transport assessment is flawed.
On schools, the report notes that Hertfordshire County Council’s growth team was consulted and did not ask for an education contribution.
The application reached committee because Councillor James Broach called it in.
What it means for you
If members follow the recommendation, that is not the end of it. Because the development would have a significant impact on Green Belt openness, the council must refer the application to the Secretary of State under the Town and Country Planning (Consultation) (England) Direction 2024 before permission can be issued. The Secretary of State then decides whether to call it in or leave it locally. No permission can be granted until a Section 106 agreement is signed.
If members refuse, they have to give clear planning reasons, and the applicant can appeal.
Either way nothing gets built quickly. Reserved matters would have to be submitted within three years of any outline permission, and work would have to start within two years of those being approved.
The committee has not met since 23 July. Its August meeting, listed for 19 August, was cancelled on the council’s calendar, which is why two Green Belt housing schemes now land on the same night. The other is 35 homes at Colesdale Farm, Cuffley.
Anyone can watch the meeting in person or via the council’s webcast. The full agenda and reports pack is published online.
The wider picture is on our Welwyn Hatfield planning news page, and the borough’s draft Local Plan, which proposes 4,428 homes for Welwyn Garden City, goes to Full Council on 16 September.
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