Planning permission for a Kings Langley car park that’s already been built on green belt land has been refused by Three Rivers District Council (TRDC).
The new car park was built on the plot opposite Kings Langley Station and behind Flowerhouse florist by Pure Bricks without permission from council.
Pure Bricks submitted a retrospective planning application to TRDC, which was unanimously rejected by the planning committee at the beginning of June.
A CCTV tower had also been installed, which, “by virtue of its size”, would also require planning permission.
Councillor Sarah Nelmes, chairman of the planning committee, said: “We’ve rejected the application for a number of reasons; the main one being that encouraging car use in Kings is the exact opposite of what we’re trying to do as a council.
“There are more sustainable ways of people getting to work and that’s what we’re trying to encourage. We’re also trying to preserve green belt land and we also didn’t like the idea of a car park that close to the river.
“There’s nothing wrong with how they’ve gone about building the car park legally, though it does arguably make the situation more complicated. I couldn’t tell you what their reason behind doing it retrospectively was – perhaps they thought because it isn’t a big car park it wouldn’t matter, or if they were maybe trying to sneak it under the radar.
“The community has not been fond of the car park overall – it was nearby residents who reported it to the council back in October when work first began.
“If you’re a neighbour in that area, you aren’t going to want to be seeing a car park every day, you’ll want to see the green space that was there before.”
The developers can appeal the decision, but if the application is rejected again, they are legally obligated to scrap the car park and restore the area to its original state.
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