The Emerging Enfield Local Plan and What It Means for Our Neighbourhood

Dear neighbours,

We are all currently concerned about the 'Southbury Leisure Centre' development on Southbury Road, for which a planning application was submitted some time ago. This project is a clear indication of what else Enfield Council has in store for our neighbourhood. Did you know that similar or even larger developments are also planned for the other legs of the Southbury Road / Great Cambridge Road junction?

We have taken a look at the new emerging Enfield Local Plan, which is intended to put the overarching London Plan into practice within the Enfield borough. Both reflect the current leaders' vision for future housing. Among other things, this determines how densely and how high Enfield may be built in the near future.

For us in the Southbury Residents Association in particular, the plans surrounding the A10/Southbury Road junction are significant. Not only is the existing cinema at this junction to be replaced by a 29-storey building. Also, the other three legs of the junction are designated for high-rise high-density buildings.

Specifically, this still concerns the Colosseum Retail Park, formerly occupied by B&Q, extending to the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, including Dunhelm and the adjacent retail premises although the latest planning application lapsed. The proposed policy is silent on this site but could include housing and industrial uses on this site in the future. A further tower block, along with other high-rise buildings, may also be erected on the Morrisons site in future. Even the south-western corner of Southbury Road and Great Cambridge Road, which is currently built up with 2-storey family houses, may also be 'adorned' with such high-rise buildings in future. More tower blocks are planned on the McDonalds / Sainsbury site. Enfield Council refers to this as a 'landmark development'.

What all these areas have in common is that residential complexes, each comprising at least several hundreds of residential units, are permitted on every corner of the aforementioned junction. In the end, several thousand more people could be living in this very confined area. This entails not only the urbanisation of the area, which we oppose for very good reasons: the development will lead to ghettoisation with the inevitable social and criminal problems, to traffic and parking problems (none of the developments is required to provide any parking spaces) and to the overburdening of the infrastructure.

Please find attached extracts from the new Enfield Local Plan and its appendices. Please form your own opinion.