The government’s plans for a 21,000-home New Town in Enfield, first reported by On London last month, will “not be possible” without significant investment in public transport and other infrastructure alongside a City Hall takeover of suburban rail serving the area, Sir Sadiq Khan told the London Assembly last week.
The Enfield site, one of 12 recommended by the government’s New Towns Taskforce, would bring together Green Belt land at Crews Hill and Chase Park – area’s already controversially earmarked for some 9,000 new homes in the council’s Local Plan, which is now at its statutory examination in public stage (EiP) before a planning inspector. And it is among the three sites highlighted by the government as “particularly promising” for many more homes.
Quizzed at his latest Mayor’s Question Time session by Conservative assembly member (AM) Alessandro Georgiou, who also leads the Tory opposition group on Enfield Council, Mayor Khan said the predominantly “greenfield” proposal was a “significant opportunity” to help address the capital’s housing crisis. “We need to build more homes,” he said. “I’ve got a brownfield first approach, but there isn’t enough brownfield land to meet the need and demand for new homes.”
The taskforce had noted in its report that both the council and the Mayor had backed the Crew Hill proposal, and that it had been “impressed by their collaborative approach”. But Khan played down his involvement ahead of the announcement. “This isn’t a City Hall decision. It is a government decision,” he said. And he was keen to set out some red lines.
“Transport investment and devolution…will be critical to unlock the housing numbers announced, the Mayor said. “It’s not possible to have this level of housing without improved transport. You can’t have one without the other.” Pushing with development “without proper infrastructure” would be the “wrong recipe,” he added.
Earlier this year, at the EiP, Transport for London had spoken out against Enfield’s proposals, telling the inspector scrutinising the Local Plan that they were “likely to result in low-density and car-dependent development”.
At City Hall, Enfield & Haringey AM Joanne McCartney told the meeting that current rail and bus services were inadequate, with Khan backing what has been a consistent all-party assembly call for a TfL takeover of the Great Northern suburban line serving Crews Hill station.
Extra GP services and schools would also be needed, as well as the “right sort of social infrastructure,” Khan said. And with McCartney reminding the meeting that there were currently 3,000 homeless families in temporary accommodation in Enfield, as well as 7,000 on the council’s housing waiting list, the Mayor stressed the need for affordable housing. “We don’t need luxury homes built as investments. It’s got to be first dibs for local people,” he said.
Khan was agnostic about the prospect of taking over the site via a mayoral development corporation (MDC), along the lines of those operating in Old Oak and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, and coming soon to take forward his Oxford Street transformation plans. MDCs were most appropriate where schemes crossed borough boundaries, he said. “No decisions have been taken on the delivery vehicle. It depends on the council and the geography. I don’t know enough about this particular scheme to have a view.”
There are other challenges too. The taskforce report itself highlights the need to acquire land currently in the hands of “multiple private owners”, and the Crews Hill scheme, substantially overlapping with Enfield’s current Local Plan proposals, also cuts across the plan’s examination, which is due to resume next week. The council is now taking legal advice on its implications, with inspector Steven Lee signalling the possible need for further sessions.
The government’s recent confirmation that Govia Thameslink, which operates the Great Northern service through Crews Hill, will be nationalised on 31 May next year, puts additional timetable pressure on Khan to agree his long-sought carve-out deal for TfL to take it over. “We look forward to working with government and TfL to engage on devolution of Great Northern trains in order to make a Crews Hill New Town viable and build a better capital for all Londoners,” a City Hall spokesperson said.
The site nevertheless remains a “strong and credible proposition”, which could “lead the way and act as an example for Green Belt release for sustainable development,” as well as supporting London’s economic growth by providing much needed housing, addressing current delivery falling well below estimated need,” according to the taskforce. But with detailed assessments now getting underway, a public consultation after Christmas, and final announcements later in the spring, when preferred locations “could change”, there is, as Khan concluded, “a long way to go”.
Meanwhile, many will be looking still at the taskforce’s inclusion of Thamesmead Waterfront in its list of 12 as an opportunity which “already enjoys significant support with a clear route to delivery”, and represents “one of the largest developable opportunities in London that is not part of the Green Belt” – dependent only on funding for the Docklands Light Railway extension, which would bring the added benefit of unlocking some 10,000 extra homes north of the river.
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