The new town will be a place-breaker not a place-maker

Placemaking in Crews Hill & Chase Park New Town

The area designated for the New Town is an established, vibrant and much-loved semi-rural community within the North-West of Enfield, already home to several hundred people.  Underpinned by a thriving social and commercial infrastructure, Crews Hill is amongst the most varied, and sustainable, commercial communities in Enfield.

“Placemaking” is about planning, and designing in advance, those features necessary for creating thriving, inclusive and resilient communities. 

Placemaking should start with what is already there. The indicative location of Crews Hill & Chase Park New Town encompasses a well known  place of unique character and history, attracting visitors from across Enfield and the Home Counties.

Community assets in the area designated for Crews Hill & Chase Park New Town

• Crews Hill Horticultural Centre  and Village
• The hamlet at Botany Bay
• Botany Bay Cricket Club
• Bay Jazz Club
• Crews Hill Residents Association
• Capel Manor College
•  The Plough
• The Robin Hood
• Cattlegate Farm
• Botany Bay Farm Shop
• Theobald’s Farmhouse
• Whitewebbs Museum of Transport
• Enfield to Broxbourne New River Cycle and Walking Path
• The King and Tinker
• Capel Manor Gardens
• Crews Hill Station
• Crews Hill Golf Club
• The Three Valleys Walk
• Merryhills Way
• The Jolly Farmers
• Home – TRENT PARK (Trent Park Equestrian Centre)
• (1) Facebook (Kings Oak Equestrian Centre)
• North Enfield Cricket Club
• Gillian’s Riding School
• Trent Park Golf Course

In the case of Crews Hill & Chase Park New Town, we have seen little evidence that
existing assets and constraints have been properly mapped, or understood,
and used to shape the concept for a new town.

For example, Crews Hill & Chase Park New Town, is not an empty canvas of “poor quality green belt” or “golf courses and car parks”.

Three Valleys Walk (The Enfield Society)

Crews Hill includes a long-established horticultural centre  (including businesses along the Crews Hill “golden mile”), equine and small rural enterprises, and landscapes, including historic landscapes, which are valued for recreation and wellbeing.

The local garden centres still sponsor Enfield in Bloom, a thriving, annual competition, amongst the last “in Blooms”  in London. Entrants learn from the wealth of gardening and horticultural expertise, they shop and socialise. Enfield in Bloom attracts entries from all over Enfield, Edmonton and Southgate, both young and old. Crews Hill is recognised as a welcome destination for those in later life for socialising, refreshments, exercise.

A successful new town would need to protect and build on these assets, not treat them as incidental.

Planners within the council may dismiss Crews Hill’s golden mile as “the wild west of garden centres,” but we see it as an important part of the borough’s economy, which directly supports hundreds of livelihoods, and which contributes to the area’s distinctive appeal.

The protection of existing green sector, AI safe jobs and relevant training and apprenticeships at Capel Manor College nearby are particularly important but completely ignored.

Subjects offered at Capel Manor College reflecting the diversity of rural enterprise at Crews Hill

PLACEMAKING OR PLACE-BREAKING?

Shamefully, far from being placemaking, both the New Town’s Report and Enfield’s new Local Plan Hearings in Public indicate that Crews Hill & Chase Park New Town will be place-breaking.

PLACEMAKING PRINCIPLES FOR NEW TOWNS

Regrettably the task force did not begin with these principles when they identified Crews Hill & Chase Park New Town. Instead they relied on ill-informed, biased perceptions and ignorance of the reality of NW Enfield, the only part of the borough with no properly evidenced strategic plan, such as the Area Action Plans, as a guide. These worthwhile and comprehensive plans will be displaced by Enfield’s New Local Plan which has a more questionable evidence base.

Of the ten principles, the following four are directly contradicted either by evidence, political expedience or lack of political ambition.

• The council leadership is clear that the home will be 3 and 4 bedrooms, will have gardens and a drive. This is not the “ambitious density” as conceived by the Task Force, the government or the Mayor of London
• Proper investment to realise Principle 3 is essential because there is an urgent need for genuinely affordable housing in Enfield. Otherwise pressure from developers, already deeply involved in submitting the proposal to the New Towns  Taskforce, will optimise their profits.
• Environmental sustainability is questionable because large scale development on the Green Belt raises some crucial issues for us
  • food security
  • flood and surface water risk
  • heat risks
  • access to green space, nature
  • biodiversity
• Transport connectivity is poor

Of the rest, the existing community of what would become Crews Hill & Chase Park New Town already amply demonstrates principles 4,5,8,9 and 10.

For this reason, we feel that starting with what is already there and focussing on principles 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7, there is some space for thoughtful, limited development at Crews Hill near the station.

But emphatically not the 21,000, ambitious-density homes proposed across the countryside. The affordable accommodation needed urgently for Enfield’s homeless households can be found elsewhere in the borough and more quickly, if there’s the political will to do so.