The demolition of Joyce Avenue & Snells Park

Enfield Council has submitted plans to demolish all 795 homes at Joyce Avenue and Snells Park (Joyce & Snells) in Upper Edmonton and build 1,983 new homes.

Summary

We reviewed the plans and note the following:

• Only around 39% of the current residents aged 16+ (i.e. 657 people) were eligible to vote in the ballot which decided the future of Joyce & Snells.

• The building and demolition work is predicted to take 22 years to complete. This is considerably longer than the 10-15 years Enfield Council previously estimated.

• The homes that will be demolished include flats built within the last 20 years, and a large number of houses and maisonettes.

• The plans estimate that 1000+ residents would leave their homes as a result of the building work and will not return to Joyce & Snells.

• The plans propose increasing the number of homes at Joyce & Snells from 795 to 1,983 (an additional 1,188 homes).

• There will be a small increase in the number of genuinely affordable Social Rent homes i.e. 15.6% (185) of the additional homes will be Social Rent.

• The total number of Social Rent homes proposed is significantly lower than the number Enfield Council previously claimed would be built (i.e. at least 81 fewer).

• None of the additional homes will be ‘Discount Rent’ (also called Intermediate Rent). This means the scheme will not help key worker households who are often struggling with private rental costs but are ineligible for Social Rent housing

• The Council has previously said that Discount Rent homes would be built at Joyce & Snells to help key workers, so it is disappointing that the plans do not include any of these homes.

• Most of the additional homes (84%) will be for sale: either as ‘private sale’, ‘shared ownership’, or ‘shared equity’, all of which are likely to be beyond the budgets of local first-time buyers.

• Only 19% of the homes would be family homes with 3 or more bedrooms, which is less than a third of what is required according to the evidence and planning policy.

• Around 15 tower blocks would be built, ranging between 8 and 19 storeys tall.

• The tower blocks will have single escape stairs and would operate a “stay-put strategy” in the event of a fire, which is concerning.

• The number of people living at Joyce & Snells would almost double, increasing from 2,225 to 4,340 when the scheme is complete i.e. after 2045.

• There would be a reduction in the amount of public open space relative to the number of people.

• The number of car parking spaces would be reduced from 526 to 400. Instead, there would be 3,900 cycle parking spaces provided and improved access to Silver Street railway station.

• Heat and hot water for the new homes will be generated by the Edmonton Incinerator, a process which will cause significant damage to the environment.

• There are major discrepancies between what the Council has previously said about the scheme and what is now being proposed. Notably there will be far fewer affordable homes than previously claimed, there will be no Discount Rent homes for key workers, and the scheme will take far longer to complete.

• The project has already been repeatedly delayed.

The full report can be downloaded here: