Enfield Local Plan

LBE submits the local plan for examination

The Council had now submitted the local plan to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government for independent examination. The Council said that over 10,000 responses had been received.

Annette Feeney has been appointed as the independent programme officer. Annette will organise and administer the examination under the Inspector’s guidance. You can contact Annette by e-mail Annette.Feeney@enfield.gov.uk

Finding submissions to Reg-19

The Council have now published the representations made during reg-19. To access the information you must first find the representation number (the so-called “Rep-ID”) in a massive Micro$oft XLSX spreadsheet. The spreadsheet has three separate sheets: two for residents’ responses and the third holding organisations.

To find a representation, first find the representation-ID (column A) and then enter the number into the search box on form https://www.enfield.gov.uk/services/planning/new-enfield-local-plan/elpexamination Note: you must enter the number exactly as is appears in the spreadsheet, include any leading zeros.

The Society’s own representation

The Society submitted a 66 page document [PDF] commenting on 88 plan policies and paragrapahs. [The document is formatted A3 landscape, so is unsuitable for home printing.] You can find our comments on the most contentious parts of the Plan using the following index:

In addition to the policies above, we also submitted comments about the Spatial Strategy, the Blue Green Strategy and the Housing Strategy.

Consultants’ reports

The Society commissioned a number of professional consultants to support its arguments about not building on the Green Belt. These are referred-to in our Representation. The reports are available here, as follows:

1. Heritage Impact Assessment at site allocations SA11.1, SA11.3 & SA11.5 (Crews Hill)
2. Enplan report on draft policies PL9, PL10, PL11, DE11 and DE5
3. Enplan-report-landscape-supporting-graphics.pdf
4. ACTA Report on heritage and historic landscapes

Council’s Regulation 22 Consultation Statement

LBE have published another mega-document, this time 688 pages, which is their Consultation Statement. It contains a summary of responses received at Regulation-18, Regulation-19 and the changes made to the Local Plan between 18 and 19. The document also include the Council’s response to specific comments made by a number of consultees, including The Enfield Society.

Analysis of the Regulation-19 responses made via this website

We’ve cranked the handle with our old-fashioned difference engine (actually a Tcl script) and come up with the follow information concerning the submissions made through our web-form between 28th March and 10:00 20th May.

Summary

Top parts of the Plan receiving comments

Top postal districts making submissions

More about the Plan

The Local Plan runs to about 600 pages, with a further 7,000 pages of evidence which justifies the policies included in the Plan. One of the more important evidence documents is the Green Belt Exceptional Circumstances Topic Paper which sets out the Council’s justification for proposing 10,000 homes on the Green Belt. You can find the links to the Plan on the Council website.

One of the arguments from The Council is that there is insufficient brownfield sites in the Borough to satisfy the housing need, which the Plan states is at least 33,280. Part of the problem with assessing housing need is that the London Plan only covers the period until 2029 and there are a number of different approaches to be used after that date.

The Society and Enfield RoadWatch also question that there are insufficient brownfield locations. in 2019 we worked with the CPRE and produced a report entitled Space to Build which identified locations for over 37,000 dwellings.

The expected timetable is as follows:

• Regulation 19 will end at 23:59BST on Monday 20th May 2024,
• Later in 2024: Examination in Public, with a Planning Inspector appointed by the Secretary of State.

Council Meeting 19th March

At a noisy, and at times bad-tempered, Council meeting on Tuesday 19th March, the Council approved the draft Local Plan by 33 votes to 22. You can watch a recording of the Full Council meeting (running time 3h 18m) via the LBE website. Note: there is no audio for the first 25 minutes of the recording. The final statement by the Leader, Cllr Caliskan, is at time index 3h 07m and the roll-call of Councillors voting can be viewed at time index 3h 13m.

Our objections

These are the areas of concern in the Plan:

Policy PL10: Chase Park (Vicarage Farm) including Land South of Enfield Road and the Trent Park Equestrian Centre

Policy PL11: Crews Hill

Site Allocation SA URB.03 Chase Farm

Tall Buildings Policy DE6: Area 1 Cockfosters

Tall Buildings Policy DE6: Area 2 Enfield Town

Tall Buildings Policy DE6: Area 6 Southgate

Tall Buildings Policy DE6: Area 8 Palmers Green

Site SA RUR.02: Hadley Wood (Land Between Camlet Way and Crescent Way)

Site SA RUR.03: Land west of Rammey March

Site SA RUR.04: M25 Junction 24 (The Ridgeway, near St John’s school)

The 2021 Version

The Council published a draft of the Local Plan in the Summer of 2021 and ran a 12-week “regulation 18” consultation. More details can be found here.

See Also

• The Society’s response to the 2021 draft
• The Extraordinary Story of Enfield Chase
• The Society’s concern for Enfield Chase
• 2021 Consultation response index

You might like to explore some of the areas affected by proposals in the Local Plan. We have a series of described walks across Enfield Chase which you can download and follow at your leisure.