What is Enfield’s Local Plan?
Local Councils are required by law to prepare a local plan, which will form a framework for future development. This covers housing, employment and growth, infrastructure, such as roads, our town centres. It is intended as a starting point for planning policies and applications, stating where development can take place and where it should be restricted.
Enfield’s new Local Plan 2019–2041 has been in development since 2017. The council has spent more than £7 million on the process and there were more than 9,000 objections from people who have serious concerns about the plan.
The Council’s Local Plan goals are:
- Housing: A minimum target of 33,280 new homes with a focus on family-sized homes, targeting at least 30% on all sites and 40% on green belt sites.
- Employment: Delivery of 304,000 square metres of industrial floorspace and 40,000 square metres of new town centre office space.
- Development on eleven main ‘placemaking’ areas of which these particularly concern AfEF:
- Meridian Water: Regeneration of ex-industrial land in the southeast to create 10,000 homes
- Chase Park: A proposed urban extension of about 3700 homes on green belt land (materially affected by the Crews Hill & Chase Park New Town).
- Crews Hill: A new settlement area with approximately 5,500 proposed homes (materially affected by the Crews Hill & Chase Park New Town)
Our Concerns about Enfield’s New Local Plan
Public engagement and governance
In 2022, several local groups, including Enfield RoadWatch, formed Action for Enfield’s Future [AfEF] to hold Enfield Council to account regarding its lack of consultation with residents about its Local Plan. This plan, so far, has taken 7+ years and cost at least £7m. It could yet be longer and more costly.
- That same year, AfEF launched a successful petition which called on Enfield Council to publish the draft Local Plan in good time for proper democratic and public scrutiny. The request was agreed, subsequently forgotten with a change in Planning personnel, but reinstated when AfEF challenged Enfield Council.
- AfEF also published an “open letter” to the Labour and Conservative Leaders of Enfield Council requiring:
- The need for councillors to engage with residents on Enfield’s draft Local Plan
- Publication of missing evidence
- Commitment to full consultation
- In March 2024, Enfield Council met to approve the start of the Reg 19 consultation, the final opportunity for the public to give their views before the Plan was submitted to the Government’s Planning Inspectorate. This process was plagued by the same disregard for the accepted conventions of public consultation that AfEF had been challenging since 2022. It was very important that both the public and elected members have sufficient time to review all the evidence before expressing their views, so it was deeply regrettable to discover that:
- The date of the scheduled Council meeting was changed from 6th to the 19th March “to give councillors and residents more time to consider the documents before Full Council” (Cllr Nesil Caliskan, Council Leader).
- When the Council published the evidence, it totalled 154 documents, amounting to well over 7,000 pages of new evidence – nearly twice as many pages as all the Harry Potter books put together. Less than 2-weeks to review the evidence, form an opinion and for the public to give feedback to their elected representatives.
- In the absence of much public engagement by the council, AfEF successfully facilitated the participation of other local interest groups and thousands of residents in three statutory consultations, helping them to submit considered, evidence-based objections. Many of the objections related to the release of Green Belt for housing and also for industrial use. Objectors submitted significant evidence that indiscriminate building on Enfield’s countryside is unnecessary to provide the housing needed. Other significant objections from AfEF’s contributors covered: affordable housing, adaptations to climate change and housing mix and need including accommodation in later life.
- Despite previous consultations and petitions generating many responses, Enfield Council failed to plan adequately for the number of representations it received from the public during the Regulation 19 consultation. To cut costs, the council chose to catalogue the many thousands of representations using an EXCEL spreadsheet. This has 15420 rows, 10 columns and live links to each representation. Unsurprisingly there were countless errors and omissions; and not everyone can access EXCEL.
- Unsurprisingly, in his letter detailing areas requiring further attention by Enfield Council, the inspector included the Representations Database. The council responded by purchasing the standard software used by council’s nationwide.
Transparency
- Enfield Council submitted its proposals for Crews Hill & Chase Park New Town to the New Town Commission in early 2025, while AfEF and other community representatives were participating in good faith in the inspection of Enfield’s Local Plan by HM Planning Inspectorate.
- A Freedom of Information request to the GLA revealed that politicians, planners and developers had been plotting in private, providing the New Towns Taskforce with partial and misleading evidence related to the proposed Crews Hill & Chase Park New Town site, thence deceiving the public.
- Crews Hill & Chase Park New Town site was ultimately named as one of the three most promising sites by the government. AfEF considers that the evidence for this conclusion is weak. See Crews Hill & Chase Park New Town page,
For more information visit The Enfield Society and Action for Enfield’s Future
Enfield’s Local Plan is now undergoing independent examination by Government Planning Inspector, Steven Lee, whose report is expected in early 2026. You can follow the local plan on the Council’s dedicated page. AfEF member groups participated fully in the Local Plan process. Hearings videos.