Unlocking Crews Hill: the legal routes to delivering a 21,000-home new town

The Mayor of London appears to be on a collision course with Enfield Council following the authority’s decision to withdraw the Crews Hill and Chase Park site from the government’s New Towns Programme. The site, located in the green belt, is earmarked for up to 21,000 homes which its proponents argue could make a meaningful contribution to addressing London’s acute housing shortage.

The stand-off lays bare a familiar tension within the capital’s planning system: the mayor’s strategic ambition to accelerate housing delivery versus the pivotal role of London boroughs, which retain control over local plan-making and most development management decisions. This faultline of strategic ambition versus local delivery runs through the English planning system more broadly. Despite widespread acknowledgement of the housing crisis, delivery at the local level remains vulnerable to political change, viability constraints and local opposition.

If the ambitions of the New Towns Programme are to be realised, some form of intervention by the mayor or central government is likely if the scheme is to remain on track and make a credible contribution to the government’s target of delivering 1.5 million homes in England over the course of this Parliament. Such intervention could also send a clear signal to other local planning authorities that withdrawal from the programme carries real consequences. 

This faultline of strategic ambition versus local delivery runs through the English planning system 

In legal terms, a range of options is available. At the London level, designation of the area as a Mayoral Development Area would enable the creation of a Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC), transferring planning powers, including plan-making, from the borough and allowing the project to be progressed notwithstanding local opposition and outside the borough’s direct control. The MDC model is already being deployed to advance the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street despite resistance from Westminster City Council.

Alternatively, central government could intervene more directly. The housing secretary could designate the area as a new town and establish a development corporation which, like an MDC, would assume planning powers from Enfield Council and take the project forward.

The development corporation model, whether initiated by City Hall or Whitehall, is well suited to a project of this complexity. It combines extensive compulsory purchase powers for land assembly with the ability to coordinate large-scale infrastructure delivery.

A further option would be for the Secretary of State to grant planning permission through a Special Development Order (SDO). This is an infrequently used but powerful tool that has been deployed to authorise politically contentious schemes, including prisons and temporary accommodation for asylum seekers, and more recently the proposed Universal United Kingdom Resort in Bedford.

These tools vary significantly in their level of intervention. Some involve structural reallocation of planning powers, such as MDCs and development corporations. Others are more targeted mechanisms, including SDOs and call-in powers. In practice, the more effective the tool in delivery terms, the greater the degree of centralisation and the greater the political sensitivity.

The Secretary of State also has significant powers to intervene in the plan-making process. Where a local planning authority fails to do what is necessary or expedient in preparing, adopting or revising a local plan, or where a plan is or may be unsatisfactory, the Secretary of State can direct that a plan be prepared, modified or revoked, or take over the process entirely. A local plan commissioner can be appointed to exercise these functions. In this context, these powers could be used to ensure that Crews Hill and Chase Park is released from the Green Belt and formally allocated for development. 

Some form of intervention by the mayor or central government is likely if the scheme is to remain on track and make a credible contribution to the government’s target 

This plan-led route is likely to be critical. While both the mayor and the secretary of state have call-in powers enabling them to determine a planning application themselves, these powers operate within the existing policy framework. Any decision would remain plan-led, with the development plan taking precedence unless material considerations indicate otherwise. Without policy intervention, the site’s current green belt designation presents a significant hurdle. A promoter would need to establish either that the site constitutes ‘grey belt’ land, with the associated expectation of up to 50% affordable housing or demonstrate very special circumstances.

In practice, call-in powers alone are unlikely to unlock a scheme of this scale. A comprehensive development of the type envisaged will almost certainly require policy intervention, whether through the plan-making process or via the more structural routes offered by development corporations.

The question is therefore not whether the mayor or the secretary of state has the legal tools to intervene, but whether there is the political will to deploy them in the face of local opposition. The answer may determine not only the fate of Crews Hill and Chase Park, but the credibility of the government’s wider housing ambitions.

James Clark is a partner at Foot Anstey