A five-hour discussion around the Edmonton housing zone at the Local Plan hearings saw council planners pushed hard to justify their numbers, reports James Cracknell

Work recently started on Meridian Two, the first part of the second phase of development at Meridian Water — Work recently started on Meridian Two, part of the second phase of Meridian Water

Building 10,000 homes at Meridian Water remains an “aspiration” for Enfield Council – despite the civic centre currently planning for under 7,000.

The ongoing public examination of the Enfield Local Plan last week heard evidence from top planners at the council on what it was aiming for at Meridian Water, the large ex-industrial area between Angel Edmonton and the River Lea which has become the council’s flagship redevelopment scheme.

For several years the council has touted the 10,000 homes figure as its overall target – and borrowed almost £500million to fund land acquisition and new infrastructure on this basis – but the first version of its draft Local Plan published in 2021 only allocated 5,000 homes to the area.

Following the closure of Ikea the following year and subsequent marketing of the site for residential development, the second draft of the Local Plan published in 2023 allocated around 6,400 homes at Meridian Water during the plan period up to 2041, with the current number being earmarked for inclusion now said to be 6,700.

To date, around 300 homes have been completed at Meridian Water’s first phase, where more than 1,000 are planned in total, while the larger second phase has planning permission for 2,300 homes – with construction starting a few months ago.

During a five-hour discussion of Meridian Water at the Local Plan examination on Wednesday, 30^th July, government-appointed inspector Steven Lee queried the 10,000 figure and why it was still being mentioned in the Local Plan as a “longer term goal”, despite no plans being presented to deliver this level of housing.

Asked by Lee where the figure came from, Edward Jones, the council’s spatial planning manager, said: “The 10,000 is a higher level aspiration that sits outside of the LPA [local planning authority] for the regeneration area as a whole. That is the origin of the figure.”

Jones’s answer referred to the division within the council between its role as the master developer for Meridian Water – promoting each housing site and trying to maximise profit from land sales – as well as being the planning authority which determines applications and leads on major strategic documents such as the Local Plan.

No-one from the Meridian Water development team, however, appeared at last week’s hearing to explain how and where the additional 3,300 homes needed to meet the 10,000 target would be delivered.

Lee further questioned Jones, pushing him to clarify that 6,700 homes up to 2041 was all that was being planned for at the current time. Jones replied: “Yes that’s correct.”

Swedish furniture giant Ikea is one of three major private landowners still remaining within the Meridian Water housing zone, alongside Tesco and Prologis, with most of the remaining sites now being council-owned.

A planning director from Quod, representing Ikea, revealed at last week’s hearing that the company had been unable to reach agreement with the council over the number of homes that could be delivered on its site – with the council’s planners wanting to allocate 1,750 homes, against Ikea’s much higher aim of 3,000.

Michael Kennedy, the council’s urban design and heritage manager, said that his team “didn’t agree” with the higher number and that they were considering “other objectives” aside from the sheer volume of homes, such as the “quality” of flats being built and wanting to ensure as many as possible were dual aspect.

Kennedy said: “What they [Ikea] presented to us, we don’t have the confidence that we should raise that capacity figure […] 1,750 is as far as our evidence can solidly take us.

“I think anything beyond that, we would really struggle to entertain with the evidence that we have.”

However, Rebecca Burnhams from Quod hit back and said: “We are disappointed because we felt there was some movement from the council […] we got to a point where we agreed the capacity would be 2,000, not 1,750 as suggested today. The council wanted to use the word ‘appropriate’, whereas we wanted it to be a ‘minimum’, on the basis we have two masterplans that show we can deliver between 2,600 and 2,900 homes while also achieving all the other place-making requirements and principles of the site allocation.”

Work continues at Meridian One, where 268 homes have now been completed — Work continues at Meridian One, the first phase of Meridian Water

Burnhams went on to mention the wider context, with the council allocating thousands of homes on the Green Belt in the west of the borough, while brownfield sites like Ikea were “not being maximised”.

She said: “The council mentioned it has a higher-level aspiration for 10,000 homes, but with less than 7,000 identified in the plan period, while there is a brownfield site here that is ripe for development and should be optimised.

“While you have pressure being put on Green Belt sites, it is unclear to us why this site is not being maximised.”

Burnhams said she was also “unhappy” with the council’s allocation of a large amount of office space for the Ikea site, suggesting this had been done “only because there was nowhere else for it to go – and that doesn’t feel like a sound approach”.

Another discussion during the hearing, this time around Meridian One, the project’s first phase, saw the council acknowledge that it should have included two smaller parcels of land within the site as being available for housing development. These sites are currently occupied by temporary ‘meanwhile’ uses – a community garden and construction skills academy – but could provide hundreds of extra homes when built on.

Matt Burn, from Better Homes for Enfield, said: “When we suggested we didn’t want one of them to come forward, because we wanted it to stay as a community garden, the council said ‘no’ – this is known about.”

Lee later asked directly if there was extra capacity at Meridian One which had been omitted from the Local Plan, to which Jones said “yes”. Lee then responded: “So the policy as submitted isn’t sound?”

A five-second silence followed, during which Lee raised both his eyebrows, before council barrister Matthew Reed KC said: “It needs to have a modification, if there is an indication it will come forward. The question is what the amount should be.”

Reed also denied that adding these extra homes would have an bearing on the rest of the plan – such as the exceptional circumstances needed to justify Green Belt development.

A vision of Enfield Council's plan for a new green space at Meridian Water called 'Brooks Park' (credit Squint Opera Architects) — A new green space at Meridian Water called ‘Brooks Park’ is planned (credit Squint Opera Architects)

Last week’s hearing also saw a lengthy discussion around publicly-accessible green space, with Burn arguing that the current plans for Meridian Water fail to deliver the amount of space needed for the number of people expected to live there, with at least 39 hectares required, while only around 11ha was currently proposed.

Burn said: “This is an area, as identified by the [council’s] blue and green audit, which has the most significant deficit of green space in the borough.

“So we have got a situation where there is not enough publicly-accessible open green space being planned for the new households, before you even get into the fact there is a deficit [now] and there has been some open space already lost.”

Burn said that Enfield Climate Action Forum and CPRE had proposed an idea for a new park spanning 60ha between both Enfield and Waltham Forest boroughs, utilising nearby land that was currently inaccessible around Banbury Reservoir and north of the North Circular Road.

This idea had also been suggested by Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, he explained, adding that 34ha was in Enfield borough and “could deliver closer to the quantum of green space needed” for Meridian Water.

Later addressing the green space proposed at Meridian Water, Reed emphasised there were two new parks being created, but admitted there “may be deficiencies in parts of the open space provision”.

He added: “It is the same as any other planning decision – it will be considered at the time whether or not that is an appropriate level of open space.”

Further issues were raised by Burn around traffic generation and access from Meridian Water to the North Circular, with council data suggesting a 39-minute delay during the afternoon peak. He said: “The council modelling identifies major impacts on the A406 junction […] and it says they will deal with them later. It is a cause for concern that such a big delay on to a major road has been deferred.”

But Reed responded: “Transport for London has scrutinised these results, they know what is coming out of the modelling, and they have taken the view there is no objection to Meridian Water as a whole.”

The final week of stage two of the Enfield Local Plan examination starts on Tuesday, 12th August, with discussion around some of the smaller sites proposed in the borough. All hearings are livestreamed via YouTube:
Visit youtube.com/@EnfieldCouncil/streams

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