Our Shared Vision

With this vision, we wish to build upon the heritage of East Hemel, paying consideration to the wider role of Hemel Hempstead as an original New Town (with 2022 marking the 75th anniversary of this) and setting the benchmark for a new way of living that meets community needs now and in years to come.

Delivering this should not only help to solve present issues, such as poor accessibility, a lack of affordable housing and a lack of jobs for local residents, but also help to develop a thriving community with the resilience and tools its needs to flourish in the future.

We want to directly involve children in the design process for East Hemel, to help encourage creative, imaginative ideas and make a place for the next generation that inspires play and wonder. Whilst the design will take a child-first approach, we will ensure East Hemel meets the needs of all residents, at all stages of life.

We will focus on the needs of children and young people to create a well-designed, inclusive neighbourhood that works for everyone, for generations to come.

East Hemel will be a place where everyone can come together to create a community. Somewhere that is accessible, safe and green with the facilities you need, (like shops and schools) close by.

“When we bring children into the picture, we see a more hopeful world. We see why it matters to bring trees and greenery into a neighbourhood, and to be less car-dependent.”
Tim Gill, Author of ‘Urban Playground: How child-friendly planning and design can save cities’

Food is at the heart of some of society’s greatest problems: obesity, food waste and food poverty, climate change and biodiversity loss. But it can also play a vital part of the solution.

Our vision is to make food more than just eating by creating opportunities for the community to grow food and enjoy it together.

We will create places that make it easy to engage with the outdoors and nature to support physical and mental wellbeing. Neighbourhoods that encourage sharing resources across kind and connected communities.

And ultimately, places that feed and nurture the next generation – all
connected through the power of food and Hemel’s farming history.

We will:
• Ensure proper ecological management of green space
• Use innovations in sustainability, such as floating solar and waste-to-energy technologies
• Restore and repurpose farmsteads for commercial uses, such as a farm shop
• Support community volunteering programmes to maintain habitats
• Provide local food waste collection schemes, toolkits and guides for community cafes, gardens and businesses
• Provide new allotments and growing areas, planting edible foods
• Provide support for sustainable food entrepreneurs
• Offer Agritech and Food Science pilots and incubation space
• Create education programmes to advise on sustainable ways of thinking about food in our day-to-day lives
• Be held accountable by The Quality of Life Foundation to create a place that offers everyone daily interaction with nature

Our two residential neighbourhoods will be full of green space with accessible, inclusive and sustainable initiatives.

We will focus on options for sustainable travel, reducing car use in the community to create safer and healthier streets. That’s why we’re creating new and improved routes which place a priority on sustainable transportation like walking and cycling.

We will retain approximately half of the current land as green space, making 500 acres of previously inaccessible land accessible to the public, and provide conditions for a variety of plants and wildlife to flourish and exceed the Government’s targets for biodiversity.

We will:
• Create green cycleways, pedestrian-first streets and new community gardens
• Enhance and maintain the Nickey Line
• Build a target of 40% affordable homes (1,600 of varying sizes and tenures)
• Improve accessibility for those with access needs

We recognise there are current infrastructure and transport concerns in Hemel Hempstead, and we’ll address these early on in collaboration with local authorities. We want to build on and improve existing transport links and create facilities that complement those in the town.

At East Hemel, the facilities you need day-to-day (like shops, schools and transport links) will be easily accessible within 15 minutes, with most within the community itself.

We will:

• Invest in local health facilities
• Better manage congestion from the M1 along A414 Breakspear
• Enable pedestrian and cycle routes between neighbourhoods
• Create mobility hubs to aid sustainable travel like scooters, e-bikes and car-share schemes
• Build a new secondary school and three new primary schools including early years

• Improve access to the town centre and places of work

East Hemel will be a resilient and self-sustaining community; a place where people can live, work and socialise together.

Central to East Hemel, the enterprise cluster will bring:

• A wide variety of commercial spaces, (HQ offices, local start-ups and incubator units)
• 6,000 new jobs and give a boost to the local economy
• A designated enterprise zone where all business rates will be reinvested into enhancing and maintaining local infrastructure

The enterprise cluster will prioritise businesses that deliver lasting and shared prosperity for the nation, and the local community – from smart construction, to gene technology, AI, robotics, big data, bioscience and Agritech.