BASED on the winning drawings of a historic housing design competition, a planning application for 60 affordable and environmentally-friendly homes has been submitted to North Herts District Council. North Hertfordshire Homes (NHH) has applied for permiss

BASED on the winning drawings of a historic housing design competition, a planning application for 60 affordable and environmentally-friendly homes has been submitted to North Herts District Council.

North Hertfordshire Homes (NHH) has applied for permission to build a mix of one and two-bedroom flats and two and three-bedroom houses on land off Cade Close in Letchworth GC.

Fifty per cent of the homes will be for shared ownership, a quarter will be for sale and a quarter for rent.

The scheme incorporates a design by British architects Stride Treglown - the winners of a global competition spearheaded by Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation and NHH and launched in February last year.

Aptly named Tomorrow's Garden City, the competition was a modern day equivalent of the Cheap Cottages Exhibition opened by the eighth Duke of Devonshire in Letchworth GC in 1905.

The brief given to the architects more than 100 years ago was to build innovative housing for a maximum cost of £150 per property.

The exhibition was a huge success, attracting over 60,000 visitors to the town from near and far and was repeated in 1907.

The 12th Duke of Devonshire officially launched the third housing design competition for Letchworth GC last year.

The new homes will be environmentally-friendly and cost-effective to run, using geo-thermal heating systems and solar energy.

NHH's chief executive, Kevin Thompson, called the plans "landmark proposals" which "update the original concept of the garden city for the 21st century."

If planning permission is granted, NHH hopes to start construction in March 2009.

The planning application, 08/02229/1, can be viewed at www.north-herts.gov.uk

Further details of the scheme can also be found at www.nhh.org.uk/development/current-projects