TAKING A LIBERTY OVER PLANNING
Malcolm Macmillan,
Chair,
London Colney parish Council
Planning permission has already been granted for housing on the pub sites of the Kings Head and the While Lion, but now a further application has been registered for the Kings Head for 7 flats and five houses. It’s a sensitive site at an important junction of the High Street and the Parish Council has once again opposed the plan.

Developers are quite happy to cram houses onto a small site as long as they don’t live with the consequences of over development and further traffic congestion. It’s a step too far; bad enough losing a village pub but the replacement by a congested housing car park at a busy junction is taking a real liberty.
And then there’s Napsbury Park. The part of the site that was intended to enhance that community, such as shops and recreation facilities, for the benefit of the 1200 people living there is also up for more housing. Sure, the current planning application is for three retail units (probably shops), but… adding 14 flats and four houses is another example of developers snubbing the community proposal from the planning inspector when the old hospital site was given permission for housing.

I do my bit, like most of you, when it comes to green credentials – a bit of composting in the garden and sorting out the household rubbish - so I’m keen to have more recycling facilities in the village, but please, not in the middle of our High Street. An application for another recycling Unit outside Tesco’s has been notified, but the Parish Council feels this is one unit too many, in the wrong place. While some villages are developing café cultures on their High Street, it seems Tesco’s has rubbishy plans of their own for London Colney.

IMPROVING COMMUNICATIONS

We’re trying to improve the information we give to villagers about the issues we are dealing with and the decisions we make. For many of you, the ideal way is through our web site and we have now decided to upgrade the Council’s web site: work has been in progress over recent months and within a matter of weeks the new site will be launched. At the last Council meeting, we liked what we saw and hope you will too. Not only will the site be of value to existing residents and business, it will be a valuable source of information to new residents

For the next three issues of the Parish magazine, we are trying a new format and will then review the response from the public and advertisers. Once again, it’s about improving the way we present our information and the news that is provided locally. A yellow booklet will still be issued with village contacts as we know how important these numbers are to residents.