The latest updates and news about our fight to protect the integrity of Tring and surrounding communities
Following Tring's momentous victory at Dacorum Borough Council on 16 April 2026, where the Development Management Committee rejected the most recent predatory Marshcroft planning application, GFRA Chair Graham Bright was invited on the radio to discuss the situation with host Andy Collins.
Listen below!
As a Committee of Tring Locals who give our own time freely and also personally donate to this cause, we are more than aware of the generosity of Members who have already contributed money to fight the proposed over-development of our cherished Town. The end is however in sight and to do less than our very best would be to give up, which we won’t do so we need to ask you again to contribute to fund our Professional’s presence at the crucial forthcoming EiP hearings.
In the first two weeks of March, the third and final stage of the Government appointed Inspectors ‘Examination in Public’ (EiP) of Dacorum’s Draft Local Plan takes place. There are 3 sessions which are highly relevant to our fight to reduce the number of new houses currently proposed for Tring to a more reasonable level.
As a reminder, the currently proposed 2,300 new houses would represent around a 46% increase in the size of Tring. We believe, if the Marshcroft and New Mill Green Belt sites were taken out of the draft Plan, leaving the Dunsley Farm site in, then the growth in the Town would be a much more reasonable 15% and the commensurate impact on Tring’s Community, Services and Transport structure would be more manageable.
The EiP Stage 3 Timetable:
On March the 3rd, there is the general site selection hearing for the Local Plan
On March the 5th, there is the crucial Tring Site Selection hearing.
On March the 10th, there is a Transport Hearing. A reminder here - Dacorum’s Transport Plan suggested there would be a very limited impact on our local roads and connecting roads, like the A41, from the extra 4000+ cars that would result from the new house build. The Transport Study, we have commissioned, begs to differ - there will be significant congestion!
We have already made a number of submissions on your behalf particularly on the loss of irreplaceable Green Belt and the part it plays as the setting for the protected Chiltern National Landscape. BUT, and it is a big BUT, these reports will not be enough to get our objections fully across in these forthcoming hearings. The opposition, which not only includes the well-resourced House Builders, but also, sadly, our own elected Dacorum Borough Council, will be fielding their reports, their Experts and, most importantly, their Planning Barrister KCs.
Returning to the analogy we used previously, we don’t want to go into this fight with only our fists when the opposition has guns! The advice given to us is that we need to have our Planning Consultant (Varsity) and our Planning Barrister, to represent us for as many of these three sessions as we can afford.
Our Treasurer, Bob Winter, confirms we currently have £8,000 in the bank account after meeting all current invoices. Our estimate is that it will cost us £30,800 for each EiP session that our KC and our Planning Consultant prepare for and attend. So, if we wish to be fully represented on all 3 days of the EiP, we will need to raise around a further £85,000 to finish this fight. We continue to negotiate with the Planning Consultant and KC to try to bring their fees down.
One other strand to this story that we must include is that, as many of you know, Barratt/Redrow has re-submitted their virtually unchanged application to develop the Marshcroft site. Unbelievably, the Developers are claiming that this area of countryside, that so many of us in Tring know from walking and running, is ‘Grey Belt’ ! And equally unbelievably, the Dacorum Planners and Councillors seem minded to schedule this application at a Planning Committee before the EiP result is determined and also are likely to approve it! See attached the letter our Planning Consultant and Planning Barrister sent to Dacorum before Christmas in an attempt to delay the specific Marshcroft application.
If they do approve this re-application, we believe the development of the New Mill site will also be inevitable, and that the draft Local Plan will be realised by stealth rather than through the EiP process. We have made strenuous efforts to point out to the Legal Officers at Dacorum that any consideration of this application before the EiP’s final report would be premature and we will continue to keep the pressure on here. It is worth noting, in what we can only describe as the arrogance of Dacorum’s Councillors, that a large Planning application in Berkhamsted near to Ashlyn’s School was recently approved by the Planning Committee, again despite the site being included in the EiP process and a strong local opposition based on the existing traffic problems around the Berkhamsted bypass junction.
Please do give as generously as you can - it really will be the last opportunity we have as Local Residents to ensure a reasonable level of growth for our Town rather than have it imposed by Central Government and Hemel Hempstead-oriented Dacorum Borough Council.
HOW TO GIVE
The GFRA Bank Account details are:
Grove Fields Residents Association
Sort code: 23-05-80
Account number: 24937695
Yours sincerely,
The GFRA Committee.
Graham Bright (Chair) , Bob Winter (Treasurer), Steve Ballantyne, Keith Baker, Rachel Moore, Phil Moore and Dimitri Patrikios.
Grove Fields Residents Association
WHAT ARE OUR CHANCES OF WINNING?
This was one of the first questions we asked our specialist planning Barrister KC, when we met him earlier this month. His answer was "You have strong arguments against the draft Local Plan’s proposal for building 2,300 new houses in Tring but, what I can say with certainty, is that without fighting, you stand no chance at all!"
The Meeting with our Planning KC gave us the chance to refine our key arguments and it’s worth reminding ourselves of them and how strong they are:
The draft Local Plan highlights the Settlement Hierarchy within Dacorum. The biggest Towns are ranked by size – Hemel Hempstead, then Berkhamsted and lastly, Tring. The larger Towns invariably have the greater social resources, everything from more Schools, Doctors, and road and utility networks. You would expect therefore that there would be equal proportionate allocations of the Government’s housing quotas when clearly the 46% provisionally allocated to Tring is dis-proportionate compared to Hemel or Berkhamsted.
The Developer is claiming that the high-grade agricultural land on the Marshcroft site, that is also in the setting of the Chilterns National Landscape, is not Green Belt but Grey Belt! Our KC told us that this ‘loophole’ is currently being used by Developers Nationally but he has not yet seen such a blatant use of this stratagem for such a large development.
Then there are all the other issues we and the Members have highlighted – everything from the flawed Transport study commissioned by Dacorum that claims there will be no significant additional pressures on the local roads and the A41 from the additional 4000 cars associated with the developments; the lack of hard promises from the Developers on the extra social amenities needed, the high pressure jet fuel line crossing the Marshcroft site; the complete lack of extra capacity from Thames Water on fresh water and sewage to service the new sites and we even have video footage of otters - a protected species - on the site boundary.
What are we going to do next on your behalf ?
Our KC, agreed that, in the short term we need to shift our focus from Stage 3 of the Government Inspectors’ ‘Examination in Public’ (EiP) (where currently we have no date scheduled) to fighting the renewed Marshcroft Planning Application to Dacorum from Barratt Redrow. This is largely the same Application that the GFRA fought against at the Developer’s Appeal hearing and then, when that went against us, it was ‘called-in’ by the Secretary of State who supported our position that the harm done to the Green Belt and the setting for the Chiltern landscape was not outweighed by the Developer’s grudging promises of community facilities and unaffordable ‘affordable new homes’ for the new Residents.
On your behalf we will be issuing letters to the Officers and Councillors on the Planning / Development Management Committee at Dacorum both reminding them of these arguments and saying that it is completely inappropriate for the Planning Committee to consider this renewed Marshcroft application at their January meeting while the EiP is in progress.
Have we the funding to continue this fight?
You, our Members, have been incredibly generous with your donations. But we are fighting on 2 fronts – with the well-funded Developers and (sadly) with our own elected Hemel-centric Dacorum Councillors. We have sufficient funds to pay for the KC and Planning Consultant fees to date. Our Treasurer, Bob Winter, estimates we will need another £7,000 to pay for the Planning Consultant’s work on Stage 3 of the EiP (the meeting that will discuss the Tring site allocations). We hope that we will be able to cover that with further Member donations.
If we want our KC to prepare and attend that meeting, it will cost about another £30,000. Big Money - and realistically we will need to access donors prepared to make sizeable individual donations to stand a chance of funding that.
As always, we finish with a reminder of the Association’s bank details for Members who feel able to contribute to the £7,000 shortfall and, of course, we welcome any of your questions.
HOW TO GIVE
The GFRA Bank Account details are:
Grove Fields Residents Association
Sort code: 23-05-80
Account number: 24937695
Yours sincerely,
The GFRA Committee.
Graham Bright (Chair) , Bob Winter (Treasurer), Steve Ballantyne, Keith Baker, Rachel Moore, Phil Moore and Dimitri Patrikios.
Grove Fields Residents Association
