News from The Barnet Society

A new planning application is in for the Whalebones site. The plans have been scaled back from 152 to 114 homes, but in most other respects are similar to the one we objected to in 2019.

My web post on 25 September about the crucial importance of minimising carbon emissions from Barnet’s existing housing stock looked at the challenge of upgrading the environmental performance of two houses on the Council’s Local Heritage List. This post shows what can be done to a more typical home in our borough.

In Barnet, the biggest cause of climate change is housing. Homes emit around 50% of the carbon released in our borough. Radically reducing those emissions by upgrading the environmental performance of our homes is the most urgent and useful thing that many of us can do.

The Barnet Vale Festival on Sunday 25th June is a free drop-in community event at the superb but dilapidated art deco pavilion in Tudor Park, Barnet EN5.

The London Festival of Architecture (LFA) is a month-long celebration of architecture and city-making that takes place every June across London. This year, for the first time, Barnet is an official destination in the LFA’s exciting and varied programme of events around the theme ‘In Common’. Several are coming up in the north of our Borough.

The Barnet Society’s Planning & Environment Committee has studied closely the latest design proposals exhibited at The Spires on 12 & 15 April. This is a once-in-a-generation chance to revitalise our town centre, but it risks being wasted. Frankly, we’re disappointed.

Despite the pace of new building in Barnet, most of our existing homes fall well below the environmental standards we need to meet to avoid climate catastrophe.

After years of dereliction, Barnet Homes have published proposals for sites in Moxon Street and Whitings Road for public consultation. The designs are better than previous schemes for the same sites approved several years ago, but never built.

Residents in the north of Barnet have recently felt besieged by new housing developments. We want more – and decent – homes for elderly as well as first-time buyers, but much of what is offered is unimaginative, out of scale and character with our neighbourhood, and mostly unaffordable. Surely we can do better?

These are critical times for London’s Green Belt. But Barnet still has many open spaces where the illusion of countryside is remarkably unspoiled. Eight of them – all in Totteridge or Mill Hill – are on new videos that you can view on the website of the London Green Belt Council (LGBC).

Local councils in London and the Home Counties are currently planning to allow building on more than 48,000 acres of the Green Belt, according to a major new report by the London Green Belt Council (LGBC).

After a nine-day Public Inquiry last month in Hendon Town Hall, a Planning Inspector has dismissed Citystyle Fairview’s appeal against Barnet Council’s refusal of 539 flats on the former gasworks site.

Urgent action is needed to save 33 Lyonsdown Road following Barnet Council’s recent decision to allow its demolition. Together with local residents, the Barnet Society has been campaigning since 2017 to save this beautiful Victorian villa but the owners have used the permitted development route to apply to knock down the locally listed building.

Barnet Council has refused planning permission for a 50-megawatt electric battery array in the green heart of the borough. An earlier application for a gas peaking plant nearby was withdrawn last year.

Last night Barnet Council’s Strategic Planning Committee unanimously approved conversion of the existing building into a 90-place school for pupils with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD), despite concerns on the part of the Barnet Society.

Eighteen months ago, the Barnet Society wrote that flouting of planning laws at 1 Sunset View and 70 High Street would be tests of Barnet Council’s will to enforce its planning decisions. Both owners appealed against Enforcement Orders, and both have lost. The decisions are significant victories over the degradation of Barnet’s Conservation Areas.

The Barnet Society has consulted its members about the current planning application to convert a former office block into a school for pupils with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). 83% of respondents opposed the application, and only 6% supported it. We have therefore decided to object to it. The Society does so with some reluctance.

Recent years have seen a wave of roof extensions across Barnet, usually providing extra space for existing homes. Richard Court in Alston Road (above) exemplifies a new variant of Permitted Development introduced by the government last year.

Above is the Green Belt between Barnet and St Albans. It’s the site of Bowmans Cross, a new settlement planned by Hertsmere Council. It will eventually have 6,000 homes for around 15,000 people – nearly as many as live in High Barnet ward.

More than two years after Barnet Council served an Enforcement Order on the owner of 70 High Street for non-compliance with its planning permission, and eight months after he appealed against the Order, a Planning Inspector has ruled that the building must be entirely demolished and the original building After Office Hours rebuilt.