Another Year! Lots of positive things to look forward to. Spring. Snowdrops, daffodils, bluebells, June busting out all over… But a few of the old chestnuts are still hanging around. Are you sufficiently holidayed and refreshed for yet another tussle about vehicle traffic in Knebworth? I’m afraid it’s coming.
KB 1 & 2 proposals for residential development along the western edge of New Knebworth are being presented for consultation in the Village Hall from 4pm to 8pm on Monday 13th January. I have been working with housebuilder partners to negotiate the Local Authority hoops, hurdles and rule changes for about seven years now, and I wish I could say I was more positive about what is being proposed. Having played an active part in the many village consultations since the last Local Plan in 1996, I know exactly what the general feeling will be about these proposals.
Fundamentally, they don’t answer the key negative raised in all these consultations, Knebworth’s historic backlog of road and access infrastructure. Current Highways ideology and policy – which may be perfectly splendid for other communities – does not work for Knebworth. This is, plain and simple, for historic and landscape reasons, not because Knebworth is looking to buck a trend. County Highways appear to answer to no one, and so the proposals to be presented have not been allowed to bring forward community-driven solutions. What we have instead – as the people who live here will immediately see – looks set to make the problems worse, across the whole village.
Having said that, the 30 years of consultations also raised a key positive of Knebworth as its ‘Garden Village’ heritage; and this – where allowed to – the proposals do draw on, and seek to reflect in a contemporary context. With your support, we should be able to create good and attractive neighbourhoods, with hedges, trees, snowdrops and daffodils… We just won’t be able to get in or out of them.
Henry Lytton Cobbold
HenryCobboldKH