Council plan to pause or stop development projects

St Albans City and District Council plans to stop the redevelopment of the Harpenden Public Halls site

A council is set to halt or pause some of its property projects in a bid to close an expected budget gap of more than £2m.

St Albans City and District Council plans to stop the redevelopment of the Harpenden Public Halls site and put projects including work at the Market Depot on Drovers Way "on the back burner".

But work on Jubilee Square, on the city's former police station site, will continue.

A council spokesman said it had been "confronted with some very hard choices".

Work on Jubilee Square for homes and commercial space on the city's former police station site will continue

The authority said it had reviewed its major development projects "in light of difficult economic conditions".

It said its regeneration and business committee had accepted its recommendations in order to "control unprecedented increasing costs beyond what could be reasonably foreseen".

The council's plans include:

• Redevelopment of the Market Depot on Drovers Way and business space at 35 Market Place in St Albans will be paused, with the authority reviewing options.

• Rebuilding the Fleetville Community Centre on Royal Road will stop temporarily.

• Redevelopment of Harpenden Public Halls and the former public toilets on Spicer Street, St Albans, will stop, with options for the disposal of both sites being looked at.

• As well as Jubilee Square, work will continue on projects in Leyland Avenue, Noke Shot, Harpenden and Ridgeview, London Colney to develop properties for market sale, social housing and temporary housing.

• An already paused project to redevelop the civic area surrounding the Alban Arena will start again when a new cultural strategy has been agreed.

'Very disappointing'

Robert Donald, Liberal Democrat chair of the regeneration and business committee, said: "We have been confronted with some very hard choices in our development programme because of the sudden and unexpected deterioration in the national economic outlook over the last few months.

"If we didn't take action to make savings or increase revenues, our budget gap for the next financial year, 2023-24, would be over £2m - a huge figure for a district council of our size.

"This has inevitably led to us putting some projects on the back burner and ceasing a couple altogether.

"This is obviously very disappointing for us after the work that has already been undertaken on these projects, but I am sure our residents will understand that we have little choice given the tough financial climate."

He added that the authority would "not forget" the paused projects and would "return to them with renewed energy" as soon as it feasibly could.

The final draft budget will be considered by the full council next month.