South West Herts Joint Strategic Plan

Consultation on South West Hertfordshire Joint Strategic Plan

The consultation on the ‘South West Hertfordshire 2050 - ‘Realising our Potential’ is now closed. This consultation, which ran from 5 September to 4 November, asked for feedback on a draft vision and objectives for South West Herts to 2050.
More than 3,000 people took part and the JSP team will be going through comments and feedback over the coming months before preparing a consultation report. Thank you to everyone who took part.

Please keep an eye on their website or follow the JSP on LinkedIn for updates.

Background

Neighbouring authorities are increasingly being encouraged to work together to provide the homes, jobs and infrastructure where people want to live.

Along with Dacorum Borough Council, St Albans City and District Council, Three Rivers District Council and Watford Borough Council we have begun work on a Joint Strategic Plan (JSP) for the South West Hertfordshire area (see map below). This work is also being supported by Hertfordshire County Council.

A key aim will be to ensure that infrastructure – such as transport, schools, health, and utilities (for example, water and sewerage) – are properly co-ordinated and delivered alongside the need for new homes and jobs. All five councils also make up a single housing market area.

By working together, the councils are confident they will be in a stronger position to deliver, and better fund essential local transport links, health services and educational facilities that local people want to see.

Each council will still be responsible for preparing their own Local Plan, but a JSP will be a critical stage in local planning work across South West Hertfordshire, setting the strategic framework and shared priorities within which individual local plans can be prepared.

All five Councils have agreed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to take the work forward.

Area to be covered by the Joint Strategic Plan

As part of progressing this work, the Councils have agreed the following governance arrangements:

• (PDF 619kb)

Previous engagement

We, along with the five other councils that make up South West Hertfordshire, launched the SW Herts, Your Future poll so that we could hear what you like about your area now, and what you think we should be thinking about as we look to shape the future. This engagement, which ran between February and May 2020, was hosted and managed by specialist online consultants. The following report summarises the feedback we received. It has been shared with everyone working on the Joint Strategic Plan and will inform our work going forwards.

(8.65mb)

Further updates and progress will appear on this page.