A small communal village whose residents are adults with learning and mental health disabilities has been praised for its "safe and caring" environment by Hertsmere MP Oliver Dowden.

Mr Dowden visited the Aldenham Care Community, near Bushey, where facilities include a bakery, café, theatre and a small farm, with crops and animals, which is run by the residents themselves.

He said: ‘It was also valuable to speak with senior staff about the management of the community and the challenges they’re facing as an organisation. On the back of this I will be engaging with my colleagues in the Government on their behalf.”

The community is run by The Camphill Village Trust, which was founded in Scotland in 1939 by an Austrian doctor, Karl König, with a group of young helpers, all refugees who had escaped Austria following the rise of the Nazi Party. The Trust has steadily expanded and now has nine sites across the country.