Thirty-two new council homes completed at Kingside, Grovehill

Thirty-two homes is not a garden community. It is, however, 32 households who were not housed last year.

Dacorum marked the completion of Kingside in Grovehill in June, with new tenants at the ribbon. In a borough where the housing argument is dominated by Hemel Garden Communities and private allocations in Tring, a completed council scheme in an existing neighbourhood is worth recording.

Grovehill was planned as a New Town neighbourhood with its own shops and school. Like several Hemel quarters it has waited through cycles of promised renewal. Kingside will not transform that. It does test whether the council can still build, at a human scale, on land it already owns.

Eden Court, on the Paradise depot site, is the next marker: homes plus a DENS hub, foodbank and community cafe. Watch whether those ancillary uses survive value engineering.