About the Friends of Bernards Heath

The Friends of Bernards Heath (FoBH) exists for charitable purposes in order to protect, preserve and where appropriate enhance the Heath for the benefit of the neighbourhood as a whole. Membership provides you with a forum to express your opinions about the Heath and an opportunity to help preserve it for future generations.

On a practical level, the Friends arrange several Action Days per year for members and volunteers who collect litter, maintain paths, plant trees, clear fallen trees and many other activities. In recent years the Friends have also raised funds to install interpretation boards and benches and to improve the foundations of paths that were prone to water-logging. The Friends also maintain this website and issue a newsletter at least twice per year. The FoBH Committee meets at least four times a year.

To read the constitution of the Friends of Bernards Heath, please click here.

Origins

Most of Bernards Heath is common land which is managed by St Albans District Council (SADC) and is protected from development for ever. However, the lower field, which is striped green on the map, is owned by Hertfordshire County Council (HCC) and is not common land. In the middle of Bernards Heath is an area (striped brown on the map) that is known as the “Former Ariston Works Site”. This land is also owned by HCC and is currently occupied by the Ambulance Service, the former Fire Station, the Pioneer Club, the Judo Club and a HCC Youth Services building. This is regarded as a “brown field site” and will inevitably be redeveloped at some point in the future.

In 2000/2001 there was a proposal from HCC to redevelop the Former Ariston Works Site and the lower field. The local community was appalled that the lower field was included in this plan; it is regarded as an integral part of the Heath and has been freely used by the general public for as long as anyone can remember. A plan was hatched to protect the lower field from development for ever by registering it as Village Green; the Bernards Heath Village Green Preservation Society was formed in order to achieve this aim.

An application for registration was made to HCC who rejected it. Because HCC was both the owner of the site and the registering authority a public enquiry was held, chaired by an independent barrister. BHVGPS raised around £15,000 to employ our own barrister to represent us at the enquiry. A huge amount of work was done collecting evidence and, although a strong case was presented, the application failed on a legal technicality.

Nevertheless, the strong feeling that was aroused by the campaign led to the declaration by SADC and HCC in their Planning Brief for the former Ariston Works site of July 2001 that the general public should have “unrestricted access to the site (the lower field) in perpetuity”. So, although Village Green status would have protected the lower field forever, unrestricted access in perpetuity amounts, in effect, to the same thing.

As well as the strong feeling about the lower field, the campaign also aroused a more general sense of community in the neighbourhood that surrounds the Heath and it was decided that, instead of disbanding the Society, the constitution would be modified so that it could evolve into the Friends of Bernards Heath and continue to act as a communication focus and to represent the wishes of the community to HCC, SADC, Countryside Management Services (CMS) and all other official bodies that have an interest in Bernards Heath. Most of all, the Friends would exist to be the conscience of the officials and politicians who promised in 2001 that the lower field would be protected in perpetuity.

This decision was vindicated, when in 2007, it was suggested that a supermarket should be built on the former Ariston Works Site, and possibly also the lower sports field. The Friends are totally against any such development and, in association with other local people and groups, the proposal was resisted…for now.

Click here to see the full story in our newsletter dated Spring 2008
Click here to see the story in the St Albans Review