A project to build 130 housing units on a green space near a hospital was recommended for approval.
Councilors will decide this week whether to give the green light to the community health partnerships plan for four apartment blocks at Finchley Memorial Hospital in North Finchley.
Barnet’s council received 677 objections to residents’ proposals, according to a planning report. A major concern was that they would result in the loss of a “heavily used open green space which is a valuable amenity resource for the local community”.
But council planning officers say in the report that the benefits of the project would outweigh the damage from the loss of open space.
The four- and five-story development – slated for land south of Granville Road and east of Bow Lane – is designed for use by NHS staff and healthcare workers, including those on salaries lower.
The planning report admits that as part of the hospital development that was approved in 2010, the area north of the hospital buildings was to be kept as open space accessible to the public.
He also indicates that the proposals run counter to a council town planning policy protecting open space from development.
But the report adds that a planning brief for the site adopted in 2007 included a “clear political acceptance” that the space north of the hospital site “could have been developed to allow the public and clinical benefits of health resulting from the new hospital “.
Officers say this “established the acceptability of the built form on this part of the site at that time (albeit low in height).”
The report said officers “took into account the exceptional circumstances associated with the need to ensure that the health service is able to retain staff to ensure adequate health care in the region.”
The blanket clearance request will be considered at a meeting of the Barnet Council’s strategic planning committee on Thursday.
More details are available here: https://barnet.moderngov.co.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=703&MId=10826
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Source: www.times-series.co.uk
This notice was published: 2021-06-14 11:19:33
