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Barnet wins £4m homes battle with Comer Group

13/08/10 5:29 pm By Richard Heap

Barnet Council has won a fight with developer Comer Group to secure £4m towards affordable homes, schools and local community facilities.

The case concerned the granting of planning permission to the East Wing of Princess Park Manor at Royal Drive, Friern Barnet. In January 2004 the Comer Group won planning permission to build 64 luxury flats in the grounds of the former mental hospital.

However, the group built a scheme of 83 flats instead without planning permission and made unauthorised external alterations to the existing buildings.

Requests were made by Barnet Council’s planning department to consider the new application afresh, and in June 2009 an enforcement notice was served on the Comer Group. The company appealed.

A public inquiry was held into the case in May and June 2010. This week the Planning Inspectorate granted planning permission for the building with 82 flats, subject to planning conditions and paying significant planning contributions.

As part of the planning permission, the Comer Group has signed a legal agreement which binds it to carrying out alterations to parts of the building to keep it in character with the grade II listed building, and to pay the contributions and the council’s costs resulting from the appeal hearings.

Councillor Richard Cornelius, cabinet member for housing, planning and regeneration, said: “This was a difficult and unprecedented case, involving a huge amount of hard work by the council, which will see a significant benefit to the community.

“I am delighted that we stood firm and have finally reached a resolution which benefits not only the borough but the flat owners themselves who were in a difficult position of living in properties without planning permission. At long last they can live in their homes without this issue hanging over them.”

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One Comment »

  • Tim Hamilton-Miller said:

    Having acted as the viability expert witness for the Comer Group in this appeal the case is far from as straight forward as this article suggests. The applicants showed substantial evidence at the appeal, which the inspector acknowledged, to show their repeated attempts at regularising alterations with the planning authority during, and after, construction of the flats. It is also more appropriate to represent the case not as a Barnet victory, but as an negotiated Section 106 settlement reached by both sides, again encouraged and supported by the inspector. The settlement figure was, for the record, almost a mid-point between what the council initially requested and what the developer offered.

    This is another example of the importance of closely reviewing scheme viability when deciding planning applications.

    Tim Hamilton-Miller , Knight Frank Affordable Housing .

    # 18 August 2010 at 1:52 PM

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