“ I agree it would be be bad planning to say the Marketplace is a suitable site for this hotel and not housing because other housing is being built in the area. Some of the other larger potential sites could perhaps have been redeveloped or repurposed for an hotel. Perhaps the market site would have been a good location for nurses accommodation. All the owners have other plans.
But it is the plans being considered for the Marketplace that are those that will or will not be built on it. If it isn't I suspect everyone agrees it will be used for housing.
It is impossible there will be over provision of new homes in the country, London and the Borough of Barnet for the imaginable future. However given the massive expansion plans of all the major hotel operators (with the biggest Premier Inn trying to nearly double its room count) it is absolutely certain there will be a massive over provision of hotels by 2020.
On the jobs front If there are to be 600 new homes in the area upwards of 1,200 new residents will increase footfall and hence employment in the town centre far more than this contentious hotel. There is plenty of vacant property in the town centre that will generate all sorts employment as part of the inevitable diversification of High Streets – business abhors a vacuum even more than nature. ”