Up to fifteen minutes will be made available for questions from members of the public on issues relating to the work of the Committee and to receive any petitions.
Minutes:
The following question was received and the Chairman responded:
Question from Cllr P Cook
Why has the Section 106 for Ellenbrook Park not been signed since 2010?
Response
A section 106 agreement requiring amongst other things the provision of Ellenbrook Park and its handover to an Ellenbrook Trust has been signed and was completed on 29th December 2000. This agreement remains in force.
When Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council and St Albans District Council considered the details of an interim landscape scheme in 2010, prior to the opening of the Ellenbrook Park to the public, it was intended to conclude a variation or supplemental deed to the original S106 to recognise this interim scheme. Detailed discussions subsequently took place between all interested parties to the original Section 106 in an effort to agree a draft of a supplemental deed. This was never signed because of the complexities of the issues but as the interim scheme was implemented, and the Park has been open to the public since November 2010 and has been maintained at the landowner’s expense there has been no need to pursue this supplemental deed.
The establishment of the Trust and the handover of the Park however remains outstanding. When the current mineral extraction application for land within the Park was received by Hertfordshire County Council in 2016, they took the view that any grant of permission for mineral extraction should be subject, amongst other matters, to a deed of variation to the original S106 from 2000 that would take into account the up to date knowledge of timescales and area of extraction in specifying the handover of the Park to the Trust.
The heads of terms of such a deed of variation are largely agreed between the three councils and the landowner. At present there is a point of disagreement in that the landowner wishes to vary the terms of the original S106 to provide that the ownership of an area of land within the Park in Welwyn Hatfield (known as site Hat 2) will be retained by them until the end of 2022 and will only then be the subject of a 125 year lease to the Trust if the landowner has not been successful in obtaining an allocation or permission for housing on that land. [The landowner has also submitted a planning application for housing on the land which is currently awaiting validation by Welwyn Hatfield BC]. The local authorities are not in agreement to this change being part of the proposed variation, therefore the variation cannot currently be concluded. It is difficult to see this situation being resolved until the Welwyn Hatfield Local Plan has progressed further through its examination.
In the absence of either the originally proposed supplemental deed from 2010 or the more recently proposed deed of variation in connection with mineral extraction, the original Section 106 from 2000 remains in force. The County Council will decide the way forward in terms of the current mineral application, but the Park remains open to the public and continues to be maintained by the landowner at their expense, pending resolution of matters relating to the proposed lease and handover to the Trust.