Deep in the North Circular Area Action Plan (NCAAP), recently adopted by Enfield Borough Council (EBC), there is a reference to the development potential of the car parks adjoining Arnos Grove Underground Station (see Policy 17 Site 7). This site is, of course, in Transport for London (TfL) ownership but it will not surprise your readers that the plan, itself a prospectus for high-density housing development along the local stretch of the NCR, views the Arnos site as a distinct possibility for further housing growth. Greater London needs more homes, but correspondingly relevant infrastructure is needed too – employment opportunities, school places, green spaces, medical, leisure and cultural facilities and parking.
The two car parks either side of the Arnos Grove station currently offers more than 300 spaces for vehicles. These spaces are filled by local drivers (and by many from outside the local area) joining the tube into central London. The NCAAP suggests that redevelopment of the western car park could disappear under a ‘mixed-use housing-led development’ provided the eastern car park was expanded to compensate for lost places. Along with the Arnos Resource Centre opposite, the site could provide some 50 new dwellings together with a frontage of commercial/retail floorspace.
It is not clear how imminent this development hinted at in the NCAAP actually is. We look to TfL for clarification. Is it more than a twinkle, so to say, in EBC’s eye?
Alongside hard information on this point, it would be helpful to know more about some of the related issues raised by the proposal sketched in the NCAAP.
(a) Architectural quality: The Underground station building designed by Charles Holden is of national importance and is Listed accordingly. The circular ticket hall is described by Pevsner as having “great repose and dignity”. Any new apartment blocks put next to it would have to be exceptional if they were not to degrade the site (the NCAAP says that setting back the new building line would achieve respect for the station). New structures emerging along the NCR do not suggest that the hand of a master architect is available in the borough.
(b) EBC parking strategy: EBC’s idea of reconfiguring the parking arrangements at Arnos Grove looks like an opportunistic one. Indeed, the NCAAP is full of references to ‘opportunity’ sites. Nowhere is there evidence of a wider strategy aimed at linking people with the public transport system, expanding and co-ordinating parking provision rather than shrinking or merely maintaining current levels. Other stations on the Piccadilly line also offer parking spaces – without a coherent strategy, a reduction in spaces at one point would disproportionately pressurise other locations.
(c) Other parking issues: The redevelopment of the area around New Southgate station (not a million miles from Arnos Grove and part of the wider scheme involving a significant growth in housing density and population (see Policy 12 etc in the NCAAP)) appears to offer no designated parking spaces. Already householders in the New Southgate residential area suffer problems caused by overspill parking. It is reasonable to look to EBC to protect parking for local residents and council tax payers who live between Arnos Grove and New Southgate – is that part of the plan?
Local householders will be keen to know whether any possible redevelopment at Arnos Grove could result in a net loss of parking spaces on the site. Were it to do so, they know exactly where the overflow would end up. Accordingly, we need early answers. Meanwhile, we advise that a sharp lookout for change be kept – as is evident from other sites in the neighbourhood, the builders can be up, up and away before we realise it.
Caroline Chénier
Chairman Broomfield Home-Owners’ and Residents’ Association
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