Issue - meetings

The meeting paused while Cllr Berryman and Cllr Hearn left the Chamber.

A deputation was put forward by Mr Stephen Brice on behalf of the Pinkham Way Alliance in relation to item 9, Pre-Submission Consultation on the North London Waste Plan.

Mr Brice was accompanied by Eveleen Ryan and began his representation by drawing attention to the fact that the Pinkham Alliance had written a letter to the Monitoring Officer with regards to some misrepresentations and errors in the earlier draft of the report, shared with them. The Council’s response, itself, raised issues and the Pinkham Way Alliance’s reply to the Monitoring Officer would include a number of additional points about the report at item 9. Mr Brice continued to highlight the areas that required attention:

• Paragraph 6.33 – stated that Pinkham Way was also proposed to be designated as a site for waste planning purposes in the waste plan. Mr Brice contended that this demonstrated the Councils intention to re-designate this site, through the back door, as locally significant industrial land. This was something which the 2012 Planning Inspector had summarily rejected.

• The Deputation felt that paragraph 6.39, overall, did not make sense. They contended that the North London Waste Authority had made clear, in correspondence on the 14^th of January, that their focus and strategy is on Edmonton and there were no plans for developing Pinkham Way but perceived this site as an asset for the future. Although, the NLWA were not asking for the site to come out of the plan, in the Deputation’s view there was a marked difference from needing the site for delivery of its waste strategy or the potential for it to be used for waste use as asserted by the report at item 9. This section also left out the recent statement of the NLWA which set out that they do not consider the Pinkham Way site ideally suited for waste and maybe open to offers for the land.

• The statement that any proposal for waste use at Pinkham Way would be smaller than previous proposed developments, had no supporting evidence anywhere in the document.

• There was no reference in the report to the consultation response from Natural England, commenting on the rich diverse bio mix of habitats at Pinkham Way which would be a loss to Haringey and more widely to London, if the site was developed. The latter part of this comment was the form of words used to describe a site of metropolitan importance. The Deputation contended that this assessment put Pinkham Way on a par with other Haringey sites of metropolitan importance such as Queenswood, Highgate and parts of the Lea Valley.

• The Deputation referred to Metropolitan sites which reported that the London Plan includes the best examples of London’s habitats including sites in urban areas such as abandoned land colonised by nature and that these were the highest priority for protection. As a SINC, the site had fulfilled its planning purpose for 40 years. However,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 54