Name-calling is not planning policy

Green councillor and Enfield group leader Sarah Jons responds to a recent national newspaper column describing her party as “Nimbys”

Green councillor Sarah Jons (left) and journalist Polly Toynbee (right, credit Policy Exchange via Wikimedia Commons)

Apparently, asking awkward questions about development now makes you a “Nimby”.

Nimby, naysayer, blocker. It has the rhythm of a nursery rhyme and roughly the same level of political argument.

Polly Toynbee’s recent column in The Guardian about the Crews Hill and Chase Park ‘new town’ gave Enfield Greens the Nimby treatment. But former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer actually got there first when, in June, he warned about “the naysayers and the blockers” and said the new town decision would be taken in the national interest.

So here is the new planning glossary…

Ask who can actually afford the homes? Nimby.

Ask whether schools, GPs, roads, trains, water and electricity can cope? Naysayer.

Ask whether people living there should have a meaningful say? Blocker.

At this rate, residents will need a bingo card!

But there is a more interesting question asked by us in the Green Party: what is development for, and who benefits?

We need homes, renewable energy, transport and digital infrastructure. But ‘development’ is not a magic word that makes consequences disappear.

Take data centres. They are coming; vast industrial buildings with huge demands for electricity and water. The Green Party is challenging their blanket treatment as critical infrastructure.

If one lands near you, you might ask what it does to the grid, water supply and local services. You might even ask what the community gets back. Congratulations – you’re a Nimby!

Then there is the other little fiction in Enfield; that five Green councillors have somehow become Conservatives in disguise. We could spend the next four years batting that one away. Yawn!

And in respect of Crews Hill and the new town; yes, Enfield needs homes, desperately. But “21,000 homes” is not a housing policy, it’s a number.

Enfield Labour’s record on Meridian Water is worth remembering. The 10,000-home ambition dates back a decade but, so far, just 301 homes have been completed, with another 274 expected by winter 2027.

This failure is not just the missing homes – Meridian Water is now part of Enfield Council’s debt problem. Labour may no longer run Enfield, but the party still owns that record. Now taxpayers are left carrying the bill.

So before Labour calls Greens “blockers” and “naysayers”, a little humility might be in order. Enfield Greens are not saying Green Belt land can never be built on – we are saying the bar should be exceptionally high. Once it is gone, there is no giant ‘undo’ button.

And while Westminster talks about the “national interest”, communities are entitled to wonder how much weight their views carry when the message from above is simply “get it built”.

Green councillors are here to ask who benefits, who pays, what we lose and whether residents are actually listened to. If that makes us Nimbys, naysayers and blockers, fine, but name-calling is not planning policy – it is what you do when you have run out of answers.

People voted Green in Enfield to challenge overdevelopment, poor planning and damage to nature. Someone has to help clear up the mess. That is what Greens are for.

We are already changing Enfield politics – and we’re only just getting started.

Editor’s note

Nimby is an acronym that stands for ‘not in my back yard’ and is a term frequently used to discredit people who raise objections to development in their local area.

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