High Barnet Station – Mayor’s team set to decide own planning application
Since Barnet Council decided in December that it was minded to refuse Barratt London’s planning application, the Mayor of London has called it in for review. A public hearing seems likely directly after the local elections on 7 May 2026. The Barnet Society & Barnet Residents Association are greatly concerned that the Mayor’s decision won’t be impartial, and has sent the letter below to our MP, Barnet Councillors and its Greater London Assembly Member.
Readers are urged to make their feelings about the planning application known to Dan Tomlinson MP at dan.tomlinson.mp@parliament.uk and Assembly Member Anne Clarke at anne.clarke@london.gov.uk
We expect candidates seeking election to Barnet Council in May in wards in and around High Barnet will be asked by residents whether they are for or against the blocks of flats being proposed on the tube station car park. For some voters this will be a critical issue.
We are hoping for a clear indication of where candidates of all parties stand. The positions to be taken by our MP and GLA member are of particular interest ahead of polling day.
Dear Dan Tomlinson, Assembly Member Anne Clarke & selected Barnet Councillors
We write on behalf of the Barnet Society & Barnet Residents Association to ask if we can count on your support at the Mayor of London’s representation hearing on this planning application. As you will know, the Mayor called in the application following Barnet Council’s decision on 8 December 2025 that it was minded to refuse it.
The date for the hearing seems likely to be directly after the local elections on 7 May 2026.
Our principal concern at this point is the clear conflict of interest since the Mayor controls Transport for London, which not only owns the site and runs the tube and bus services connecting it to our neighbourhood, but has commissioned the project and stands to profit from its construction. That is setting, writing and marking your own homework.
Although the Mayor has delegated the decision to his Deputy, Jules Pipe, conflict of interest cannot be avoided since Jules Pipe has made statements in support of this and other TfL developments. He has also expressed regret at their refusal when they could not be called in. That is not an unbiased position from which to determine the future character of Chipping Barnet.
If approved, the application will have a most harmful impact on the town and its nearby green spaces, and set a benchmark for future development in the area. Visualisations in the application were cynically manipulated to downplay its deplorable visual impact.
We’d welcome well-designed homes at an appropriate scale of development. But this proposal grossly exceeds that.
Instead, it would
- breach many policies in Barnet’s recently-adopted Local Plan, including its tall buildings assessment for this site endorsed by the Planning Inspectorate, and make incorrect use of the Hillingdon case to justify a tall building in this location;
- create homes of unacceptably poor safety and quality in terms of layout, detailed design and amenity;
- provide minimal improvements to accessibility and safety that would be negated by loss of the car park;
- exacerbate existing congestion of the set-down and pick-up area, likely causing vehicles to back up onto the busy A1000;
- irreparably harm the identity of the neighbourhood, nearby and from afar;
- be unsustainable by many environmental standards, contrary to the developer’s claims; and
- offer no compensating benefits of significance by way of transport connectivity or new/improved facilities to the existing community.
Our many pages of comments on the application detailed multiple breaches of Borough, London & National policy and guidance (some of them basic matters not revealed in earlier public consultations).
In sum, the site is unsuitable for 1,000 new residents. The resulting excessive height, density and design weaknesses – and the operational difficulties that would beset residents and travellers and the public, commercial and emergency services trying to serve them – risk repeating the mistakes of postwar housing estates. That would be to the lasting cost of our community and the identity and character of Chipping Barnet.
Regards
Robin Bishop
Planning & Environment Lead, the Barnet Society
Gordon Massey
Planning Consultant, Barnet Residents Association
On our website you can read the Barnet Society’s objections to the scheme as well as coverage of the Council’s Planning Committee decision.
Tags: #Barnet Council #Development #Hearing #High Barnet #High Barnet Station #Mayor Of London #Planning
9 thoughts on “High Barnet Station – Mayor’s team set to decide own planning application ”
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I agree with all that has been said by the Barnet Society and others when commenting on the proposed development. I was born in Barnet 76 years ago and this proposal will destroy the area. It will also provide totally inadequate homes and environment for those who choose or have to live in the flats. How our MP and/or Councillors can be neutral regarding such a vital issue is beyond belief. What is the purpose of having a local planning authority if a properly taken decision can be overridden by a mayor who knows none of the facts?
I know our local Chipping Barnet MP Dan Tomlinson is busy of late, what with making contributions on TV of late as with Sky News. That is admirable but one would hope the MP make might a similar effort when it comes to such huge flat developments on High Barnet tube station car park. Saying that they don’t wish to take a view for or against – as they consider it should be up to the Council to decide – is rather passing the buck. Constituents surely deserve better, no? I can’t be alone in this view.
You’re not alone in that view. It’s passing the buck, and you don’t have to be a psephologist to understand what might follow from it.
This development is out of proportion with the area. 11 storeys is too high, cramming this amount of people into such a tiny space will result in an unsustainable influx of people into an area already struggling to provide enough health care and school places for residents already here. History has shown that high rise living never works well for residents, living in them and for the residents living in proximity.
A smaller development will allow for people to be assimilated into the community in a more positive way and mean that they will be able to access the services they need. Inviting people into an area when they won’t be able to access the services they need will be a tragedy and create chaos for everyone in the area.
When the people in the flats buy cars, where will they park them? It’s unpractical and unrealistic to think that the people living in the flats will only use public transport all of the time. If they have children, they will buy cars. If they have family living in other areas of London, or the country, they will want a car to see their families.
It’s going to be very difficult for the people in the flats to move to a family home, as there is very few family homes in the area. This will push up house prices even more, making having a family home an unattainable dream very many more people.
Developers underestimate, or dismiss the effect that high rise development has on the local community. Walking to the station, at the moment, is a pleasant experience. You can often hear bird song and sometimes even see blue sky, which is beneficial to mental health. Building a large high box will destroy this and cause misery to anyone living or walking nearby. The building will cast a massive shadow. This is lazy and unimaginative planning, designed to maximise profit, with little thought for those who will look at it every day, or those that will be living in it.
When High Barnet was first developed, homes were built with sensitivity and consideration for the people who were going to live in them. I don’t see why these considerations can’t be put in place today.
I think this development needs much more thought. Consideration for those already living in the area and those who may move into the area needs to be given deeper thought. Barnet needs affordable homes. Not multiple unaffordable tiny flats.
I have lived in High Barnet for 25 years, it’s a lovely community full of families. It’s important to maintain this community for those here and those moving into it.
It all seems pretty pointless objecting if the mayor can call it in and allow the scheme to go ahead with so much local opposition.
Personally, I think building any new flats on the plot of the carpark is short sighted and lacks ambition. High Barnet Station is the end of the Northern Line and people use it to travel from outside of London to make their journey into Central London. As such it acts as transport hub for those outside of the M25 people don’t always take mainline trains, as they’re often out of service to rail replacement bus services. Additionally the cost of train travel from further afield means it’s often cheaper to travel down by car to a place like Barnet and park there. Personally I would like to see the car park expanded to a multi story car park to facilitate a park and ride model. A bigger car park there would also help rejuvenate the high street.
I agree with everything said in the Tube Flats article. It is all so very sad and so very true How to destroy a much used community asset in -the blink of an eye!
Building an abundance of tiny flats on our much used car park is simply satisfying the whim of a Mayor who is intent on destroying the suburbs of London now that he has devastated the inner circle.
As highlighted in our objectives to council planning application, the site is unsuitable for 1,000 new residents. The resulting excessive height of 11 storey building on the top of Barnet and the operational difficulties line congestion on the roads, no parking facility and lots of button on the local NHS facilities that would beset residents and travellers and the public here.
Please help us to disapprove this building application. Thanks
I absolutely agree with the above and I oppose this development. Barnet is my home town and I was born here 58 years ago. I do not object to new family houses with gardens, but I do object to high rise builds on train lines. We are already drowning in traffic. We have a hospital that cannot cope as it is and GP surgeries that cannot cope with the amount of patients. Sadiq Khan has an agenda to only suit himself. He does not care about how communities really feel. He doesn’t have to live nearby and he, I’m sure is able to afford private health care and gets driven everywhere he goes. This is a money making exercise. These properties are not affordable for young families they are for well off commuters who can afford Barnet prices.
We will lose green belt and Chipping Barnet will not be the same again. Stop building. It’s too much