Barratt Homes has submitted plans for a major redevelopment of more than 450 homes in Mill Hill, NW7. The scheme lies wholly within the green belt.
Barratt has been here before – it is building a 650-home scheme on Croydon’s green belt, on a former hospital site, Cane Hill. 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, and will have done its homework. It should stand a good chance.
Here’s why. 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 biomedical research centre has freed up the Barnet site for redevelopment.
As well as being brownfield, the site has very little in the way of public access. Just 7,500 sq ft is accessible, via an existing right of way across a field.
The scheme would open up an area of around 1.5m sq ft to the public, with access to woodland previously fenced off. The publicly accessible area would be more than 200 times bigger than at present.
Furthermore, according to planning documents the existing developed land covers 1m sq ft. Once complete, the new development will take up just 620,000 sq ft, giving much more land back to nature and enhancing the openness of the green belt.
The result is more and better access to the green belt, a vacant brownfield site redeveloped with buildings demolished and green space increased and improved, plus more than 450 much-needed homes in blocks of around four to five storeys in the most.
But the Campaign to Protect Rural England London says: “Our stance is no to any building on the green belt.”
This view backs up a previous Pint of Milk column showing the Campaign to Protect Rural England’s lack of desire for compromise, even when compromise might make sense.
Of the 83 comments at the time of writing, 65 were objections. The words “green” and “belt” featured heavily.
Central London developments feel the squeeze
Following a trend seen recently at Battersea Power Station, SW8, New Scotland Yard, SW1, and the Clearings, SW3, and likely to continue across central London, a development at 22 Hanover Square, W1, has gone back to the drawing board to provide more but smaller homes – this time more than double the number originally envisioned.
The scheme was granted consent around a year ago to provide 41 homes and a 51-bedroom hotel, but revised plans submitted to Westminster City Council reveal that developer Eros now wants to build 88 homes and a 53-bedroom hotel.
The application says: “The consented scheme provides residential accommodation which typically comprises large apartments extending over the full width of the building.”
However, it goes on to state that the development has a requirement for a greater proportion of smaller residential units. Recent stamp duty changes mean buyers at the top of the market have disappeared. Developers are now planning more units with lower capital values in order to prevent sales drying up.
The scheme, on the south-west corner of Hanover Square in the heart of Mayfair, will see the loss of around 118,000 sq ft of office space.
DP9 is acting on behalf of Eros. The site was acquired in 2014 from Aberdeen for £155m.
