Plans would clear the Piccotts End garden centre for an open storage yard stacked to 6.75m, with lorry movements roughly doubling. Comments close 11 September.
A new planning application would demolish the Hillier Garden Centre at Piccotts End and turn the site into an open storage yard, with goods stacked up to 6.75 metres high and almost no buildings at all.
The application, 26/01773/FUL, was received by Dacorum Borough Council on 13 August and validated on 18 August. It is with a planning case officer now, and comments close on Friday 11 September (Dacorum planning register).
The site is on Leighton Buzzard Road, HP1 3BA, in Watling ward and Great Gaddesden parish. It sits in the Green Belt, and its southern boundary runs into flood zones 2 and 3 alongside the River Gade.
Permission for a warehouse here was already granted in March
This is the part the headline version of the story misses. The council granted permission for a storage and distribution scheme on this site on 17 March 2026, under application 25/00581/FUL (Dacorum planning register).
The applicant’s own planning statement is blunt about what that means. It argues that the principle has “already been established and confirmed as acceptable”, and that if this new application is refused, the March permission “would nevertheless remain capable of implementation” (planning statement, paragraph 1.5).
So the question in front of the council is not whether the garden centre becomes an employment site. That is settled. The question is what form it takes.
What has changed: the building comes out
The approved scheme included a storage building. The new one deletes it. In its place are welfare blocks totalling 94 square metres containing WCs, a tea point, a cycle store and a bin store.
The statement says the building was dropped “in direct response to occupier feedback, which indicates that a building of this size is not needed”.
The applicant’s own comparison of the site before and after:
| Existing | Proposed | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built footprint | 1,022 sqm | 109 sqm | 89% reduction |
| Floorspace | 1,321 sqm | 94 sqm | 93% reduction |
| Hardstanding | 6,575 sqm | 6,615 sqm | 1% increase |
| Landscaping | 1,075 sqm | 2,064 sqm | 92% increase |
Those figures are accurate, and they are also the reason to read the plans rather than the summary. The buildings go, but the goods do not. Storage heights would be capped at 6.75 metres in the southern yard, where the approved building would have stood, and 6 metres in the northern yard. That is roughly 22 feet of stacked material across an open site, in place of a 1,022 square metre building footprint.
The statement notes the council had already accepted those heights under condition 18 of the March permission. The yard could be split into two areas for separate operators.
Total traffic falls. Lorry traffic roughly doubles
The transport note submitted with the application surveyed the garden centre entrance on Thursday 28 and Friday 29 November 2024, between 7am and 7pm.
- Thursday: 657 vehicle movements, including 72 vans and 12 HGV movements.
- Friday: 702 vehicle movements, including 80 vans and 15 HGV movements.
For the storage yard, the consultants used the TRICS database and a self-storage warehouse as a deliberate worst case. That predicts about 182 vehicle movements a day, of which approximately 25 would be HGV movements (transport technical note, section 5.4).
Both things are true at once, and the note says so: roughly 475 fewer vehicle movements a day than the garden centre generated, but about twice as many lorry movements. The note argues the lower total offsets the higher HGV share.
Service areas are designed for 16.5 metre articulated lorries. The note expects around a quarter of movements to head north on Leighton Buzzard Road, which is the route over Water End Bridge towards Leighton Buzzard and Dunstable.
What else the application says
- Jobs: yard-based staff only, no office employment, with 3 to 4 staff on site at peak times.
- Parking: 13 car spaces including 3 Blue Badge bays, plus 4 cycle stands.
- Biodiversity: claimed net gains of 36.73% in habitat units, 11.12% in hedgerow units and 23.85% in watercourse units.
- Trees: none on the site are covered by a Tree Preservation Order.
- Applicant: RVL Properties, with Iceni Projects Limited acting as planning agent.
The statement also flags what is coming next door. The emerging Dacorum Local Plan proposes a major urban extension north of Hemel Hempstead, sites HH01 and HH02, for around 1,500 homes. That land includes ground directly north east of the site, across Leighton Buzzard Road.
Is the garden centre actually closing?
The planning statement says the garden centre “is due to close shortly, with the existing owners refocussing investment in other locations”.
We checked Hillier’s own website on 23 August. The Hemel Hempstead garden centre page is still live, still lists the centre among Hillier’s garden centres, and gives normal opening hours of 9am to 5.30pm Monday to Saturday and 10.30am to 4.30pm on Sunday, along with its Mulberry and Thyme coffee shop. There is no closure notice on it.
We have not been able to confirm a closing date from the operator, so we are not reporting one. The closure statement above is the applicant’s, made in a planning document, and is not the same thing as an announcement from Hillier.
What it means for you
If you use the garden centre, nothing changes today, and no closing date has been published by Hillier.
If you live at Piccotts End, Water End or Potten End, or use Leighton Buzzard Road, the number worth your attention is the HGV one. Fewer cars, more lorries, is a different kind of road to live on even when the headline total falls.
To comment, you have until Friday 11 September. Comments go through the Dacorum planning register under reference 26/01773/FUL. Planning comments must address planning matters: highway safety, Green Belt openness, flood risk, noise, hours of operation and landscaping all count. Objections to a business on principle, or to the identity of the operator, do not.
Because permission already exists from March, an objection asking for no development at all has little practical effect. Comments on the specific differences, the storage heights, the loss of the building, the lorry movements and the hours, are the ones that engage with what is actually being decided.
We track new applications across the borough on our Hemel Hempstead planning news page.
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