Plans by the Notting Hill Housing Trust to significantly increase the density of housing along the North Circular Road, near the Bowes Road/Telford Road intersection, were discussed at a meeting of Enfield Council's Planning Panel at a packed meeting held on 28 February at the Trinity-at-Bowes Centre.
According to a posting on the Bowes & Bounds United website, opposition to the plans from members of the public appeared to be unanimous. A Bowes Park resident, Nikki Salih, from the Ritz Parade Traders Association, is urging concerned people to sign a petition, which can obtained from Jag's Trophies, 160 Bowes Road, N11 2JG, and can also be downloaded.
The controversy relates to four planning applications, outline details of which are available here. They entail construction of over two hundred new residential units to replace a much smaller number of older properties. Opponents of the scheme consider that the proposed housing density is too high, that there would be negative impacts on traffic and parking and that local infrastructure - schools, doctors, etc - would be overwhelmed. Support for the opposition has been voiced by the Head Teacher of Broomfield School, who considers that the new buildings would make his school claustrophobic and gloomy.
Concerns about Notting Hill's plans were raised earlier in the month at the local Area Forum, when council officers made it clear that the planning applications were not compatible with the levels of population density envisaged by the North Circular Area Action Plan, which will be officially published on 8th March and presented at a public event on 9th March. The same meeting heard accusations that the housing trust was to some extent undermining the principles of the action plan by submitting planning applications in small tranches, without making clear what its overall intentions were for the tracts of land that it now owns along the North Circular. This land had been in public hands for many years, awaiting decisions about future widening of the North Circular, and was sold to Notting Hill in 2010 once road widening plans had been finalised.
However, the Council did provide a crumb of comfort to people opposing the scheme, when an officer stated that deadlines for submission of comments on planning applications were not absolute - planning officials would take account of any comments that arrived after the deadline but before they had begun considering the applications.
Detailed documents relating to the planning applications are available using the links below:
A document which describes Notting Hill's overall vision for redevelopment of the North Circ in the Palmers Green district is available here.
