A new report on the proposed Crews Hill and Chase Park new town.
This report is for people interested in the proposed new town at Crews Hill and Chase Park. It does not argue for or against the new town. Instead, it seeks to highlight issues which have so far been ignored, underplayed, or misrepresented.
Proposals to build up to 21,000 homes across 884 hectares of land, which is the size of roughly 1,200 football pitches, would be a huge and permanent change for Enfield. If the new town goes ahead, it will affect homes, jobs, transport, access to open countryside, nature and public trust in how decisions are made. A new town could deliver significant benefits, but there is also a risk of missed opportunities and major losses.
The central argument in our report is that a proposal on this scale must be underpinned by clear and honest evidence. So far, that test has not been met. Not by a long way.
Too much of the public case for a new town at Crews Hill and Chase Park rests on assertion rather than proof. There have been sweeping claims made by politicians about sustainability, transport, housing delivery, ecology and public benefit. But when we looked more closely, we found the picture is often partial, contradictory and almost always unproven. Some of the claims being made are simply wrong. That is one of the report’s main concerns: that people are being misled.
The report does not claim that nothing should ever be built at Crews Hill or Chase Park. It does, however, ask a basic question: where is the evidence for claims this big? And if the evidence exists, why is it withheld from public view?
The report is broken into 12 chapters, each takes 3 to 5 minutes to read.
You can download the full report here.
Better Homes Enfield 