London Mayor over rules council and grants permission for new homes on disused site

Plans to redevelop a disused site in North West London to provide over 800 new homes, with over 40% affordable properties, which was rejected by the borough council is to go ahead.

The Mayor of London called in the application for Pentavia Retail Park in Mill Hill after Barnet Council rejected it because members of its planning committee felt the scheme was an over development of the site and would not provide enough affordable

The original application included 724 homes, of which 35% were to be affordable. Now, following the Mayor’s intervention, the number of homes has been increased by 120 to 844 and the level of affordable has been increased to 41%, including those social rent and London Living Rent levels.

Barnet delivered just 7,670 homes and only 1,645 affordable homes between 2012 and 2017, which was well below the targets set out in the London Plan, the capital’s planning bible. Between 2014 and 2017, just 9% of the homes given planning permission in Barnet were affordable.

The scheme approved by the Mayor will provide more affordable homes than were delivered across the whole of Barnet in the year 2017/2018.

‘This is classic example of an underused site with the potential to deliver significant numbers of homes, including affordable homes at social rent and London Living Rent levels. I’m clear that I will use all the levers at my disposal to increase the delivery of new genuinely affordable homes across the capital,’ said the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.

‘It’s testament to the hard work of my planning team that, since I called this application in for further scrutiny, they have been able to increase the level of affordable housing even higher than it was previously. As such, having considered all the evidence available to me, I’ve decided to approve this application,’ he added.

The firm’s involved welcomed the Mayor’s intervention. ‘Our plans for new homes at Pentavia Retail Park are precisely what London needs. Access to quality homes, at an affordable price, is something desperately needed in Mill Hill, not least for the many key public sector workers who provide vital services in local schools and hospitals, many of whom we’ve spoken to in the last few months. We look forward to delivering 844 new homes for Londoners,’ said Andrew McDaniel of Meadow Residential.

The proposal ‘breathes new life’ into this brownfield site by creating a sheltered ‘green heart’, according to Earle Arney, chief executive officer of architects Arney Fender Katsalidis. He pointed out that it turns a largely unused retail park into a thriving and sustainable residential community.

‘Over 600 new trees will act as green lungs, together with landscaped spaces larger than two football pitches. These green spaces are for all, every home will look into and have access to them. Moreover, the development includes 41% genuinely affordable homes, with over half being Build to Rent, to make a substantial contribution towards meeting local housing needs,’ he explained.

‘This will be a transformational scheme for new generations of Mill Hill residents, helping to address London’s housing crisis. There should be no reason why other disused sites are not developed in a similar fashion if we as a community are serious about creating much needed homes for Londoners,’ he added.