Last week, the Greater London Authority (GLA) launched its new ‘Planning London Datahub’, which is part of the GLA’s ambition to make planning data more accessible and usable.
The information available on the GLA Datahub shows that over the last three years, Enfield has performed poorly in terms of housing. For example, the Datahub shows that between 2018 and 2020:
- The number of affordable homes built in Enfield has fallen sharply over the last three years.
- Only 9.8% of the additional housing built in Enfield was ‘affordable’, which is around a third of what it should have been (30%).
- The number of additional homes built in Enfield were almost half the previous three years (2015-2017).
- Enfield has lost more Social Rent housing than has been built, despite Enfield having an urgent need for this type of housing.
- Enfield is delivering far less affordable housing than Barnet and Waltham Forest (i.e. Enfield’s Outer London neighbours).
Why does it matter?
The impact of not building enough affordable housing will have negatively affected a wide range of Enfield’s residents, but it is undoubtedly being felt most acutely by families currently living in unsafe, or overcrowded, or insecure housing.
We have summarised some of the key data in the tables below and the Planning London Datahub can be accessed here: https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/planning-london-datahub.
Figure 1: Additional homes built in Enfield.
| 2015-2017 | 2018-2020 | |
| Number of additional homes | 1,972 | 1,025 |
| % Market Housing | 76.9% | 90.2% |
| % ‘Affordable’ Housing | 23.10% | 9.80% |
| Social Rent | 2.2% | -1.7% |
| London Affordable Rent (LAR) | 0% | 0% |
| Affordable Rent (not LAR) | 8.9% | 9.5% |
| Intermediate | 12% | 2.0% |
Figure 2: Additional homes built in Barnet.
| 2015-2017 | 2018-2020 | |
| Total Additional Housing | 5,303 | 6,705 |
| % Market Housing | 80.5% | 90.2% |
| % ‘Affordable’ Housing | 9.4% | 9.8% |
| Social Rent | 8.1% | 0% |
| London Affordable Rent | 0% | 0.8% |
| Affordable Rent (not LAR) | 6.3% | 3.1% |
| Intermediate | 5% | 5.9% |
Figure 3: Additional homes built in Waltham Forest.
| 2015-2017 | 2018-2020 | |
| Total Additional Housing | 2,708 | 2,236 |
| % Market Housing | 53.5% | 77.3% |
| % ‘Affordable’ Housing | 46.4% | 22.7% |
| Social Rent | 0.9% | 6.5% |
| London Affordable Rent | None | 0.5% |
| Affordable Rent (not LAR) | 28.2% | 3.7% |
| Intermediate | 17.3% | 12% |
Better Homes Enfield 