Stevenage's Residents have their say on Proposed Housing Developments

We’ve been consulting on a few different housing developments in four different areas of the town, which have now come to a close. Thank you to everyone who took the time to submit their comments on The Oval, Cartref (Redcar), Ellis Avenue and Kenilworth Phase 2 housing development proposals. Your feedback is essential for us to be able to undertake regeneration, creating new affordable council housing and retail spaces that work for our whole community.

Since February 2023, we have carried out twelve face-to-face events on the different proposals across the town, as well as asking for your views through our online surveys. The feedback has been really helpful in enabling us to improve the proposals for the better. During this period over 4,000 people responded across the various consultations.

Deputy Leader, Councillor Jeannette Thomas, Housing and Housing Development Portfolio Holder said: “Many parts of the UK are facing a housing crisis. We’re committed to building back better and greener, delivering more council homes and increasing our housing stock.

“Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond to our consultations. It’s an important part of our process to ensure everyone has the opportunity to have their say on the proposals. All our new housing developments, within Stevenage, are highly sustainable with state-of-the-art technology that also helps to reduce running costs for tenants too.”

All our new developments adhere to our 5 Star Quality Approach. This ensures all properties being constructed as part of our housing developments meet five key criteria:

1. Sustainable development.
2. Genuinely affordable rents.
3. Tenure blind design (use the same materials for social housing and the private properties we sell).
4. Makes best use of land.
5. Community led consultation.

What happens next?

We’re taking account of all the different feedback received to put together some amended versions of the schemes. After four rounds of consultation, The Oval has now been submitted to planning, with the remaining three applications due to be submitted in the coming weeks. These will be independently reviewed by the Local Planning Authority and will be subject to a final decision at the Spring/Summer Planning Committee.

Here the committee will take account of the different proposals and will either approve or reject the plans in their current form.

Find out more about Housing Development and the schemes currently on site and those completed.