Enfield council withdraws from government’s new towns programme

Enfield council in north London has withdrawn from the government’s new towns programme, in a significant blow to Labour’s flagship housebuilding scheme. The move by the new minority Conservative-led administration could present one of the first tests of Rachel Reeves’s planning changes , designed to curb the use of judicial reviews against new infrastructure. The project to build 21,000 homes at Crews Hill and Chase Park on the northern fringes of the capital was selected in March for the new towns programme along with six other locations across England. The new towns scheme has been heralded by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) as the most ambitious housebuilding project in England for half a century and is regarded as a significant step towards helping Labour achieve its goal of building 1.5m homes during this parliament. The withdrawal comes after significant local opposition to the Enfield plan to build homes, shops, schools and services such as doctors’ surgeries on green belt land currently occupied by several garden centres and family-run businesses. Enfield council, which was previously run by Labour, had already devised a plan to build homes at Crews Hill and gave its backing to the new town proposal. However, Labour lost control of the council in the local elections earlier this month and on Wednesday evening the Conservative councillor Alessandro Georgiou was elected leader of the authority’s minority Tory administration. …