Plans have been submitted by Barratt Homes for a major redevelopment of more than 450 homes in Mill Hill, NW7, the London borough of Barnet. The scheme lies wholly within the green belt, so we can doubtless expect a huge backlash on the proposals – it’s rather par for the course.
However, Barratt have been here before and are currently building a 650-unit scheme on Croydon’s green belt, on a former hospital site, Cane Hill. Relatively speaking, the Croydon plans sailed through the planning system, taking just six months from application to consent, albeit with a good deal of pre-application and consultation exercises. Barratt will be hoping for the same again. They’ll have done their homework though and won’t be submitting plans of this size on a whim. In my eyes, it should hopefully stand a good chance.
Here’s why. Firstly, the site is a brownfield site, the former home of the National Institute for Medical Research, now based in the recently opened Francis Crick Institute, next to St Pancras station. The development of this state of the art biomedical research centre has essentially freed up the Barnet site for redevelopment.
As well as being brownfield, the site currently has very little in the way of public access, in fact just 7,500 sq ft is accessible, via an existing right of way across a field. The proposed scheme will open up an area of around 1.5m sq ft to the public, with access to woodland that was previously fenced off. The sites area that will be publicly accessible will be more than 200 times in size than the existing site.
Furthermore, according to planning documents, the existing developed land within the site is equal to 1m sq ft. Once complete, the new development will take up just 620,000 sq ft, therefore giving over much more land back to nature and the openness of the green belt.
What’s not to like? More and better access to the green belt. A vacant brownfield site redeveloped with buildings demolished and more green space given back to the site, plus more than 450 much-needed homes in blocks around four five storeys in the most.
I got in touch with CPRE London to ask for their views, who stated, “Our stance is no to any building on the green belt.” As ever, this view was to be completely expected and backs up a previous Pint of Milk article showing the CPRE’s lack for compromise, even when in most minds and examples like this, it makes rational sense. Also, unsurprisingly and rather depressingly, looking at the comments to the application at the time of writing, a total of 83 had been received; 65 of those objecting. The words ‘green’ and ‘belt’ feature heavily.
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