There’s a live debate under the Civic Movement umbrella body concerned …. heading. I do believe there is an immensely strong case for planning authorities acting as an independent balancing route to determine often contentious decisions BUT that requires the planning authority to be themselves balanced and reasonable against facts.
Below is a recent open letter in such a space. (Councillor Ejiofor is Leader of Haringey Council.)
Is this relevant to a wider audience, such as here in Enfield? Before the open letter is an excerpt from a document going to Barnet’s Cabinet this evening (18/12), again from PWA. Note that an equivalent position holds for Enfield.
“Each of the seven North London boroughs is responsible for ensuring that every site identified in the proposed NLWP complies with their own Local Plan policies. A Nature Conservation Site is not suitable for inclusion in the NLWP.
The site is not in Barnet. So why should it concern Barnet? Because the NLWP will become formal Barnet Council policy and will be used in determining planning applications. The NLWP is a joint plan, and each borough is jointly responsible for ensuring that all the sites included are suitable. The London Plan requires that designated industrial land to be used for waste facilities, not nature conservation sites. The fact that the NLWP includes a protected nature conservation site cuts directly across Barnet’s Core Policy CS7 on p89 of Barnet Council’s Local Plan.
If the NLWP is adopted in its current form, it will undermine the council’s policy on biodiversity. The council will need to justify this when the local plan undergoes its public examination.”
Note that Enfield’s own Local Plan is currently out for consultation.
Open letter:-
PINKHAM WAY – INCLUSION OF GRADE 1 SITE FOR NATURE CONSERVATION (SINC) IN DRAFT REG 19 NORTH LONDON WASTE PLAN (NLWP)
Dear Councillor Ejiofor,
We are disappointed not to have received your promised response to our letter of 11th September 2018.
Our letter stated that an attempt to include Pinkham Way in the draft Reg 19 NLWP would fly in the face of national, regional and Council planning policy, and would conflict directly with the NLWP’s own consultant’s comments that the site is part of Green Infrastructure, has high ecological value, including substantial tree cover, and that its development would mean the loss of greenfield land which fulfilled a role in flood alleviation along the adjacent A406. We concluded that Pinkham Way’s inclusion in the NLWP would be seen as irrational.
The site was first designated a Grade 2 SINC (Local Value) in 1979, and upgraded to SINC 1 (Borough Value) in 1998. Natural England considers that the SINC is now of Metropolitan Importance.
The London Plan states that these are ‘the highest priority for protection’.
The site has thus been fulfilling its designated planning purpose as a SINC for 40 years. Having been completely reclaimed by nature, it is excluded from the definition of PDL/brownfield land in the London Plan and in the NPPF.
The Employment Land designation was added In 1999, creating the only dual SINC/Employment designated site in the UK. Not for one minute during the 19 years since then has the site come near to fulfilling its designated planning purpose as employment land. The employment designation has now been roundly discredited, both by Haringey’s own professional consultants and by the 2016 Inspector, who insisted on the site's removal from the Site Allocations DPD.
In October the Regulatory Committee considered the NLWP, took account of written and spoken evidence presented by PWA, questioned officers in detail, and voted to recommend that the Cabinet remove the site from the NLWP.
We are hopeful that you and your Cabinet will take note and do likewise.
As the member responsible for Haringey’s input into the NLWP and the London Plan, you will, we hope, be able to give the following guidance to your Cabinet colleagues:
The London Plan requires new waste facilities to be sited either on Strategic or Locally Significant Industrial Land – not on nature conservation sites.
London Plan policies protect Open and Green Spaces (Policy G4) and Biodiversity (Policy G6)
The 7 North London Councils have put forward some 93 hectares of Industrial Land to meet the NLWP’s estimated need for 9 hectares up to 2035.
Without the Pinkham Way site, Haringey's offer constitutes over one third of those 93 hectares.
Why then should the Council that you lead feel obliged to offer a further 5.9 ha of nature conservation land, which its Local Plan protects as a Grade 1 SINC and identifies as a Green Space? The site fails London Plan criteria for new waste sites, and the 2016 Inspector ejected it from the Site Allocations DPD. The Council had stated in 2013 that inclusion in the SADPD was a pre-condition for its original 2015 inclusion in the NLWP. What does the council say now?
If the Cabinet followed the Regulatory Committee's recommendation and withdrew the site, the 93 hectares mentioned above - more than 10 x the amount needed – would still remain. Only a small part of these industrial areas would need to come forward for sufficient additional waste treatment capacity to meet any NLWP needs.
A study of Council reports to members since 2009, when Pinkham Way was first offered up for the NLWP, reveals a pattern of concealing material information from members and from the public. The reports have offered no proper site description, particularly of its status as Grade 1 SINC of which part is Metropolitan Open Land, part Ecological Corridor, and which forms an integral green link in a chain of open land from Parkland Walk, via Alexandra Park, Albert Road Rec, Golf Club Allotments, Tunnel Gardens, and on to Coppetts Wood / Glebelands Nature Reserve. Nor have they ever explained the protection specifically offered by Council policies on Nature Conservation and Open Space, or bothered even to justify its inclusion in the NLWP.
The report to the October 18th Regulatory Committee and the draft Cabinet report included in the papers were a disgrace, with a raft of omissions and misleading information, as was the Council’s spoken response to the PWA deputation on the night. The poverty of Council information was such that we believe that the committee could not have reached a proper decision about the site’s inclusion in the Reg 19 NLWP without PWA's input.
Why should the Council consistently withhold material information about this one site from members charged with making objective evidence-based decisions on its future?
The NLWP is a joint plan, prepared jointly by the 7 north London boroughs. The inclusion of Pinkham Way is contrary to all their own local plans, which all contain policies on Biodiversity and Open Space to protect sites such as this. The NLWP becomes a formal part of all these plans (as it does with Haringey’s) and must therefore comply with each one.
As it stands, with the Pinkham Way site included, the NLWP does not comply either with them or with the London Plan. It will thus be found unsound when it is considered at the Examination in Public.
There is no justification for Pinkham Way's inclusion. Without it the industrial sites already offered, whose designations meet London Plan criteria, will easily supply what is needed.
We consider that the insistence on including it is irrational and wholly politically driven.
With kind regards,
Stephen Brice
Chair – Pinkham Way Alliance
06 December 2018
