Enfield Council promised employment opportunities as part of its flagship Meridian Water regeneration scheme. However, these have not been delivered, and the jobs lost as a result of the redevelopment have not been adequately replaced.
In June 2017, Enfield Council purchased the Stonehill Estate, a 10-hectare area of Strategic Industrial Land (SIL) situated in the east of the Meridian Water Regeneration Area, for £61.5 million. [1]
The Council borrowed the money to purchase the land and paid a significant premium; comparisons with other sites suggest they may have paid £15-20 million more than the land was worth. [2]
Council officers justified the purchase by claiming that a section of the land (roughly 2.4 hectares) would be used to build a large e-commerce fulfilment centre, which would generate over 1,000 new jobs by 2020/21. [3] The existing buildings were demolished between 2015 and 2017 in preparation for redevelopment, resulting in the loss of approximately 350-500 jobs. [4]
A Council report said that the e-commerce centre would ‘constitute a game-changing early delivery for Meridian Water that would help put the development on the map as a centre for employment, enterprise and economic activity’. [5]
However, the promised e-commerce centre was not built and to date – two years after it was due to have been completed and operational – no plans have been submitted. It’s not clear whether the Council still intends to deliver the ‘game-changing’ e-commerce centre.
Council officers also justified the purchase of the Stonehill Estate by claiming part of the land would be used to build around 2,000 new homes, a new school, and offices. The report said the new homes would be built between 2029 and 2035, and that purchasing the land would ‘help accelerate housing delivery’ at Meridian Water. [6] The report acknowledged that delivering these homes would require the removal of the Strategic Industrial Land (SIL) planning designation by the GLA, but officers said the GLA had given an ‘indication’ that they were willing to consider partial removal (called de-designation).
However more than six years have passed and none of the SIL has been de-designated. This means the land cannot be used for new housing. This raises questions:
- How will the Council deliver the homes and jobs it committed to?
- How will it repay the money it borrowed to purchase the land?
- If it can’t deliver the jobs and homes, how will it justify paying over the odds for the land?
Unfortunately, what’s happened at the Stonehill Estate is not a one-off. Other sites across Meridian Water appear to have been purchased by the Council on the basis they would deliver additional employment opportunities and new housing. They have cleared away the existing businesses and employment in preparation for redevelopment, which has failed to materialise.
For example, the Council’s Meridian Water Employment Strategy committed to ‘1,000+ [construction] jobs generated every year, sustained for the whole period’, but by April 2023, less than 600 had been created in total. [7, 8]
Likewise, the Employment Strategy also said ‘1,000 new high-quality jobs through Meanwhile Employment Uses’ would be generated on land waiting for redevelopment at Meridian Water, but by April 2023, only 141 people had been employed through meanwhile activities. [9]
In short, over a thousand jobs have been lost and hundreds of new jobs promised have failed to materialise. By way of context, unemployment in the local area is far higher than the London and national averages. [10] This is why it is important that the regeneration of industrial land at Meridian Water increases employment and business opportunities in the area and does not reduce them.
These issues and discrepancies should be addressed in the new Meridian Water Masterplan. The Council has spent a considerable amount of money on consultants in developing different iterations of the masterplan (i.e. £1.2 million by 2020) and has indicated that it is now complete. [11, 12] However, despite Enfield Council’s repeated promises that the masterplan would be put out for consultation, neither the public nor statutory consultees have as yet been consulted about its contents. This casts considerable doubt over the masterplan’s credibility and means that a large number of important questions and concerns, including about job losses and employment strategies, effective land use, new homes, and the use of public finances, remain largely unanswered.
REFERENCES
- HM Land Registry; Summary of Freehold for Land at Harbet Road, Enfield
- Benchmarks calculated using London Industrial Land Supply Study 2020 Main Report (GLA)
- Enfield Council; Overview & Scrutiny Committee, May 2017
- The Planning Inspectorate; Appeal Decision for Stonehill Estate, Silvermere Drive, Edmonton, London, N18 3SB, September 2015
- Enfield Council; Overview & Scrutiny Committee, May 2017
- Enfield Council; Overview & Scrutiny Committee, May 2017
- Enfield Council; Merdian Water Employment Strategy, March 2020
- Enfield Council; Meridian Water Financial Model, April 2023
- Enfield Council; Meridian Water Financial Model, April 2023
- Enfield Council; Upper Edmonton and Borough Profile, 2023
- Enfield Council; Cabinet Report, July 2020
- Enfield Council, Restructure of Meridian Water Team, April 2023
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