More than 100 new homes are now set to be built next to Mill Hill Broadway Station, reports Grace Howarth, Local Democracy Reporter

Plans for Mill Hill Broadway Station car park (credit Metropolitan Workshop)

Barnet Council’s planning committee has approved plans for new homes on Mill Hill Broadway Station’s car park.

The development, brought forward in a joint venture between insurance company Aviva and property developer Stories, will see 130 homes built across three linked blocks ranging four to six storeys in height.

Of the new homes, 50% will be affordable, comprising 30% London living rent and 70% at discount market rent.

Speaking at a strategic planning committee on Monday (14th), a representative from Stories, Richard Meier, said Stories and Aviva were “very proud” to have been “selected” by the council, which owns the site, to deliver the new homes.

Currently the car park, called Bunns Lane, has 186 spaces. The scheme proposes to retain 40 car parking spaces in total, of which 30 will be publicly accessible and the other ten being for private use.

The housing mix comprises 81 one-bedroom homes, 40 two-bedroom homes and nine three-bedroom homes.

Council planning officer Sheetal Chikhlia said the developer had engaged with Network Rail on the development of a ‘step free’ access point to the station and added there would be “no conflict” between the schemes.

Richard reiterated he was “comfortable” Stories would enable Network Rail to deliver the step-free access.

Conservative councillor Joshua Conway asked if Stories had carried out any research on how regularly the current car park was used. Richard said a “high proportion” of the car park was used by people “further away” or “outside the local area” for commuting.

Richard said: “We also found there is quite a high proportion of drop-offs and on that basis we’ve designed, specially, a number of the parking bays to be used for drop offs to actually make that a better and more usable experience for people.”

Labour councillor Claire Farrier said she was “concerned about flats facing onto the railway”.

She said: “We heard on the site how noisy the trains going past there are and how frequent they are. So the air quality and noise from the railway, how is that going to be managed for the flats facing that.”

Richard said Stories had worked with an environmental engineer to address these issues.

He said the type of glazing in the windows addressed the noise issues and the air filters and the heating and cooling systems were built in a way that lessened the need to open windows.

Following discussions the plans were approved by the committee five to three with members voting along party lines.

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