London desperately needs more homes, but where should they be built? Should some of them be on the previously sacrosanct Green Belt, prompting conflict in the suburbs? That was the thorny subject addressed this week at an event held at the Dugdale arts centre in Enfield Town, hosted by The London Society with the local community newspaper, Enfield Dispatch, and chaired by On London publisher and editor Dave Hill.
It was an appropriate location. Green Belt land makes up 37 per cent of the borough of Enfield, whose council has led the way in London in identifying development sites within that protected zone. Its new Local Plan, now at its public examination stage overseen by a government planning inspector, proposes some 9,200 new homes on the Green Belt at Chase Park and Crews Hill.
Meanwhile, Sir Sadiq Khan Khan is conducting his own Green Belt review, Transport for London has made an “illustrative” proposal for Enfield to accommodate up to 12,000 new homes on alternative Green Belt land nearer to public transport, and there are strong suggestions too that the government’s New Towns taskforce will soon recommend Crews Hill for one of these settlements, aiming for at least 10,000 homes there.
Following an overview of London Green Belt history by Dr Jack Brown, senior lecturer in government studies at King’s College, and a summary of the local situation by Enfield Dispatch editor James Cracknell, debate was polite but revealed firmly-held opposing views.
“Families need homes, no more excuses,” said London YIMBY representative John Murphy. “Young people” unable to get on the property ladder were now in their 40s, he added. “I want more affordable homes, so people can have more children and live better lives, not so pressured financially.” The Green Belt, he said, was now “strangling London”.
He said the deposit for first-time buyers in Enfield is now £85,000 while private sector rents are higher than ever, making it harder to save such a sum: “If you’re a couple and you’ve done everything right but you can’t afford a house you therefore can’t afford to have a child.”
Addressing the council’s objectives for Crews Hill, Murphy said it was “a good plan” and that although he felt sorry for people employed by the area’s many garden centres who might lose their jobs if the area was cleared for housing, he asked why they couldn’t be relocated somewhere further north. “Nobody has to lose,” he said.
Murphy was also critical of the council, though, over its handling of a major brownfield site, Meridian Water, in Upper Edmonton in the south-east of the borough. Enfield owns nearly two-thirds of the developable land within the site, and a new railway station opened there in 2019, but progress has been slow.
“It’s a good plan, I’m in favour of it,” Murphy said, but while local were residents were having to help meet the cost of the scheme, it had been blighted by “delay, delay, delay”. He concluded: “Families need homes, builders want to build and nobody needs any more excuses from politicians.”
Opposing the council’s plans, Andrew Lack from the Enfield Society said one of the sites it had chosen was a significant remnant of the historically important ”Enfield Chase”, a Royal hunting ground from medieval times and “part of the character of the borough” akin to Richmond Park or Hampstead Heath. He argued that it should remain protected and the council should instead be prioritising brownfield sites, which a society survey suggested could accommodate 38,000 homes.
“There is land and it’s not being developed,” he said, citing stalled progress on sites including Meridian Water, where 10,000 homes are promised, but also on a 1,800 home scheme in Southbury, which was abandoned when planning permission expired last year.
Lack set out a nuanced position, saying the society had backed development on the Arnos Grove station car park in the south of the borough and also supported Tottenham Hotspur FC’s recent controversial plans for a women’s training centre in the Green Belt. “The society does accept some development may be needed,” he said. “The critical factor is that it must be sympathetic.”
That also meant no “tower blocks” in locations such as Enfield Town, he added, when pressed on the need for building in well-connected areas. It still had the “character of a small market town,” he said, as well as being a conservation area with a significant number of listed buildings where new tall buildings were inappropriate, though the society “would accept up to seven storeys”.
However, a member of the audience said the housing crisis was now at such a level that Green Belt development was needed alongside “densification” in town centres and around transport hubs. Other points included the need to “go back to council housing” to guarantee affordability, as well as building sustainably “where the buses and trains already are” and to a higher standard as well.
A local property developer highlighted soaring building costs increasingly rendering brownfield sites unviable, while architect Russell Curtis recalled that development around railway stations was not new in Enfield. Another audience member asked how to counter well-organised “NIMBY” campaigns – get lobbying your councillors, was the answer – and another called for consultation to engage more with people who actually needed homes, as well as hearing from opponents.
Can Enfield’s Green Belt defenders hold their position? London Society trustee and experienced town planner Heather Cheesbrough set out the council’s legal duty to prepare a Local Plan that broadly complies with all mayoral and national planning policies as well as being designed to meet housing need.
That inevitably meant finding more land to meet Enfield’s share of London’s new 88,000 homes a year target, taking into account recent dramatic falls in brownfield site supply, the “human and financial” costs of homelessness for families and the council alike, and the impact on the wider economy of failing to provide enough homes. “That’s the dilemma for the council, identifying those sites,” she said. “But we can’t put our heads in the sand and say we don’t want development.”
Where that development takes place will be largely determined over the coming months. The examination of the Enfield plan resumes on 21 October, followed by further consultation before ministerial sign-off. Meanwhile, the findings of the New Towns Taskforce are expected within weeks.
Follow Charles Wright on Bluesky. Photos by Simon O’Connor. Main pic L-R: Jack Brown, Andrew Lack, Dave Hill, James Cracknell, John Murphy, Heather Cheesbrough. Comprehensive coverage of Enfield’s Local Plan by Enfield Dispatch here. The next London Society housing event will take place on 25 October in the City of London. Details here.
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