I understand Mr Quinlan’s concern, expressed in his letter last month, that improved infrastructure can make a community a more attractive proposition for population growth. Knebworth has faced that compromise since the Railway Station was added in the 1880s. But the point I’ve been trying to make across the last two months – alongside revisiting some local history – is that Knebworth has borne significant population growth already without infrastructure. Specifically road infrastructure. Now, with Highways policy the way it is currently, this looks set to continue.
Instead, I’d like to see us catch up with some of the infrastructure that was originally planned for our Garden Village. I’d like to see purpose-built routes and safe junctions to take traffic off Deards End Lane, off Gipsy Lane, and out of the centre of the village. Not to encourage car use, or for the benefit of so-called ‘rat-runners’, but for necessary local road use and deliveries. By creating planned and fit-for-purpose roads for local traffic we help to create the ‘Low Traffic Neighbourhoods’ and protected Conservation Areas that our planning policies seek.
The new developments that the North Herts Local Plan is proposing for the west side of the village are contained to the west by the motorway, to the north by the Golf Club, and to the south by the Welwyn & Hatfield District line, so I don’t see including road infrastructure in them as encouraging further houses beyond. What I do see, once the developments are in place, is no opportunity for us to change our mind, and decide that we do need the road infrastructure after all.
So give the question some thought. It will come up in the coming months as these developments are masterplanned and consulted on. It’s an important decision for us to make for future generations of our village.
Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH