Scholars Walk Bishop's Stortford: Prices From £482,500

The 208-home estate replacing Bishop’s Stortford High School on London Road has gone on sale, with prices running from £482,500 to £690,000. Bellway’s own listing for Scholars Walk describes it as “just launched”, and the site’s sales office is open Fridays to Sundays.

A piece of paperwork that has to be settled before anyone can move in has just landed too. A full travel plan for the development was submitted to East Herts Council on 5 August and validated on 25 August, under reference X/26/0341/CND. It matters because the outline permission says the travel plan must be approved at least three months before the first home is occupied.

What is being built

The reserved matters approval, granted on 11 December 2025 under reference 3/25/0913/REM, covers 208 homes on the 17-acre site. The travel plan sets out the mix:

• 23 one-bedroom apartments
• 36 two-bedroom apartments and houses
• 97 three-bedroom houses
• 46 four-bedroom houses
• 6 five-bedroom houses

Of the 208, Bellway says 125 are for private sale and 83 are affordable homes, let at low-cost rent or sold through shared ownership. That is 40 per cent affordable housing, a share the developer’s sales director, Greg Allsop, highlighted when the detailed plans were approved.

Parking is 464 spaces: 386 allocated to houses, 50 unallocated for the apartments and another 28 unallocated on top. East Herts standards would allow up to 504 and require at least 379, so the scheme sits between the two. Every home gets at least one cycle space, in a garage, a garden store or a communal store.

The money that comes with it

Under the planning agreement, Bellway is contributing more than £4.5 million. Its own breakdown is:

The land sale is also what paid for the school to move. Bishop’s Stortford High School relocated to a new building at St James’ Park on the southern edge of town, where Bellway says it is building 498 homes.

A site that took eighteen years to settle

The planning file for the London Road site is long, and it is worth seeing in one place. An application for up to 220 homes was withdrawn in 2008. A second attempt at up to 220 was refused in 2010.

The application that finally succeeded, 3/20/0151/OUT for up to 223 homes, was received on 24 January 2020. Councillors took it on 4 November 2020. The permission itself was not issued until 17 April 2025, four and a half years after the committee decision, and the file records 206 comments.

Demolition began in October 2025, detailed approval followed that December, and Bellway said at the time that it hoped to release plots for sale in summer 2026 and to have the first residents in during early 2027. The sales launch and the timing of the travel plan both fit that.

What the travel plan promises

The travel plan was written by consultants i-Transport and is dated 3 July 2026. It is a resubmission: an earlier attempt, X/26/0162/CND, is still listed as pending, and the covering letter says this version was amended to take in every comment raised, including naming the travel plan co-ordinator.

The headline commitments for residents are:

• a travel voucher worth £50 for each flat and £100 for each house, for the first occupants only, usable towards a bus season ticket, a rail season ticket or network card, a bicycle, or Bikeability training for up to four people in the household
• a travel plan website or information pack for every household
• a travel plan co-ordinator funded for five years, with annual monitoring surveys
• travel events in years two and five, and a residents’ steering group if there is enough interest

The targets themselves are modest and are built on 2011 census journey-to-work data for the surrounding area, because that is the last full set the plan uses. On that basis 67.9 per cent of trips are made by car. The plan aims to hold that unchanged in year one, then cut it to 62.9 per cent by year three and 57.9 per cent by year five, with walking rising from 7.3 to 9.3 per cent and cycling from 1.4 to 3.4 per cent. Those interim figures are due to be replaced once a baseline survey is done on site.

One thing to watch: the document gives two different triggers for that baseline survey. Section 3 says it happens at 75 per cent occupation or six months from first occupation, whichever is sooner; section 8 says 50 per cent occupation on the same test, while its own table reverts to 75 per cent. Which one applies decides how early the real numbers get measured.

Getting about from the new estate

The plan’s own distance table puts the site 1,512 metres from Bishop’s Stortford station, an 18-minute walk or a six-minute cycle, and Thorley Hill Primary School 212 metres away, three minutes on foot. There is a second, gated vehicle access to Thorley Hill Primary.

Buses run from the Pig Lane stops at the site entrance on London Road. Services 509, 509A, 510 and 510A between Stansted Airport and Harlow are listed as a 24-hour service, every 15 to 20 minutes between 6.15am and 8.15pm on weekdays and Saturdays, and every 30 minutes on Sundays between 10.19am and 6.15pm. The 306 to Wicken Bonhunt is one bus each way on weekdays only. At the London Road stops a little further north, the 511 runs every 30 minutes between 7am and 7pm with no Sunday service, and the 309 to Stansted Airport runs mostly in the small hours and the late evening.

The plan notes there is no dedicated cycling infrastructure near the site, and relies on the surrounding 30mph roads instead.

What it means for you

• If you are buying, the sales office is on London Road, CM23 3LU, open Fridays 10am to 5pm and Saturdays and Sundays 11am to 5pm, and closed Monday to Thursday. The advertised range is £482,500 to £690,000. Check the current price and availability with the developer rather than relying on any published range.
• If you already live nearby, the applications to watch are the remaining condition discharges on the council’s planning portal. Several are still pending, including external lighting, materials samples and the management of the open space.
• If you are renting or looking at shared ownership, 83 of the 208 homes are affordable, ranging from one-bedroom apartments to three-bedroom houses. Bellway says they will come through low-cost rent and shared ownership, but it has not named the housing provider.

Our Bishop’s Stortford house prices page tracks what homes across the district are actually selling for, and train times to London covers the service from the station the plan leans on so heavily.