The Green Lanes Business Association (GLBA) is urging Enfield Council to continue its opposition to the conversion of shops in Palmers Green Town Centre into other types of business, such as restaurants, cafes and fast-food outlets.
The GLBA recently raised the case of an application to convert the use category of the ground floor of 290 Green Lanes from A1 (shops) to mixed A1 and A3 (restaurants and cafes). In a letter to the Council's Planning Department, it suggests that the same arguments that led to Council to reject an earlier application to convert the same premises entirely to A3 use applied equally to the new application - that this would conflict with the policy of resisting change of use to non-retail within the core retail frontages of Upper Edmonton, Palmers Green and Southgate Circus (see Policy (II) S6 of the Unitary Development Plan, Chapter 11).
The Unitary Development Plan states that for the Palmers Green Core Retail Frontage to retain its vitality, viability and retail character, at least 65 per cent of premises must be used for A1 use - a figure lower than this is considered "of critical concern". A second document, the Core Strategy, stipulates that there should be a good range of comparison shopping facilities and other town-centre related services and facilities.
The current figure is actually much lower than this - a mere 45.5 per cent. This figure emerged from the results of a survey of Palmers Green Town Centre carried out by the Council, which produced the following totals:
| Use Class | Number |
| A1 (shops) | 76 |
| A2 (financial and professional services) | 33 |
| A3 (restaurants and cafes) | 21 |
| A4 (drinking establishments) | 4 |
| A5 (hot-food takeaways) | 11 |
| D1 (non-residential institutions) | 4 |
| D2 (assembly and leisure) | 2 |
| Sui generis | 14 |
| C3 (dwelling houses) | 2 |
| TOTAL | 167 |
| A1 as a percentage of total | 45.5% |
