Green councillors in Enfield are to join forces with the borough’s Conservatives to oppose Labour plans for building thousands of new homes on local Green Belt land.
The Enfield Dispatch newspaper has reported that they and the Tories, who now form the largest group on the north London council but don’t have a majority, were “set to hold talks over how they can work together to save the Green Belt”
Asked about their opposition to Green Belt development, one of the Green councillors, Laura Davenport, (pictured) told the Dispatch: “I think the Tories have that in common with us”. She added: “If we want the best for the borough, we have to work together.”
The Green group holds the balance of power in Enfield, after the Conservatives won 31 seats and Labour won 27 at last week’s borough elections.
Previous, Labour-run, administrations had aspired to building on Green Belt land in the borough and in 2021 Local Plan proposals were drafted to enable over 6,000 homes to be constructed in the Crews Hill area and on farmland dubbed “Chase Park” in the north of the borough.
The proposals were criticised at the time by Sir Sadiq Khan, a long-time opponent of Green Belt development. But by early 2025, with a new Labour national government in power promising to accelerate housebuilding, he had accepted that Green Belt release had become “unavoidable” if housing need in the capital was to be met.
Then, last autumn, the national government confirmed that its New Towns Taskforce had selected the Crews Hill and Chase Park as a location for over 20,000 homes, effectively combining the areas and earmarking them for around 21,000 new homes, more than double the council’s revised plans for 9,200 in all.
The New Towns Taskforce set out an ambition for 50 per cent of the New Town’s homes to be “affordable” and make a major contribution to addressing “London’s acute housing need”. This would be a far higher proportion than supplied by the vast majority of housing developments in the capital, especially in recent years when “affordable” percentages have fallen.
Enfield Conservatives have always opposed releasing Green Belt land for development and made it a central issue in their election campaign, and conservationist group The Enfield Society has raised a petition against it.
Green Party leader and London Assembly member Zack Polanski criticised Labour’s record on “affordable” housing, claiming that the Greens would do better. The Enfield Greens’ manifesto led on promises to “protect green spaces” and “make green homes affordable for all”.
As well as opposing the Green Belt release that would enable the New Town to be built, the Green councillors in Enfield are aligned with the Tories in opposing Tottenham Hotspur FC’s plans, approved in February 2025, to build a training centre for its women’s team on the site of a former golf course in the Whitewebb’s Park area. In March, dates in June were set for a High Court judicial review hearing of a campaigners’ challenge to the planning consent.
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Conservative – Conservationist alliance. Is this the way forward?
On the affordable homes point, the article compares aspiration for new towns with the actual delivery of other housing sites. If you compare aspirations – for example as set within Enfield’s Local Plan – then the new town aspiration is the same as the aspiration for other housing developments. We cannot yet forecast what the delivery differences are likely to be as the actual sites within the broad boundary are not published.