News from The Barnet Society

Separate cycle lanes up and down Barnet Hill - an ambition ridiculed for so long by Barnet councillors - may have become a step closer as a result of the government's decision to pump £2 billion into schemes to encourage cycling and walking as a way of fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

Enjoy five short walks in our local countryside recommended by Owen Jones. In May the Barnet Society celebrated its 75th birthday. Since our founding in 1945 was prompted by the threat to build on the green space that surrounds Chipping Barnet on three sides, it also seems appropriate to celebrate that countryside.

In a dramatic U-turn, Barnet Council has dropped its plan to temporarily close Barnet High Street to through traffic as a way of ensuring safe social distancing for pedestrians and shoppers.

Barnet High Street is to be closed temporarily to all through traffic from the last week of August to ensure there is safe social distancing on the narrow pavement beside the parish church of St John the Baptist.

Ambitious plans are being drawn up to celebrate the 550th anniversary next year of the Battle of Barnet.

By installing two male mannequins dressed in white in the Old Courthouse Recreation Ground, Barnet Lawns Bowls Club has managed to frighten off crows that have been digging holes in the fine turf of their two bowling greens.

Two building projects under construction in Chipping Barnet’s Conservation Areas are flouting planning laws. They are tests of Barnet Council’s will to enforce its planning decisions. They’re merely the most flagrant of numerous planning abuses that are gradually degrading our Conservation Areas.

Work has started clearing the site off Rowley Lane, Boreham Wood, for the construction of the new Sky Studios Elstree, which were granted planning approval by Hertsmere Borough Council earlier this month.

By shortening its route through New Barnet and High Barnet, Transport for London is hoping to give "a new lease of life" to the 384 bus service, by ensuring faster travelling times and by providing a new direct connection to Edgware.

This article highlights the Barnet Society’s concerns related to the sweeping reforms announced last week by the Government, which are due to come into force from September.

The previous update of 29th June 2019 referred to the progress made by the Darlands Conservation Trust since their inception in September 2017.

Swift awareness week has been judged a success by admirers of High Barnet's rare, elusive summer visitors who have again take up residence under the eaves of houses or in nest boxes.

The landscape of the Dollis Brook, from its sources near Moat Mount to Whetstone and beyond, is a green lung for residents and visitors to Chipping Barnet, and a vital wildlife corridor. But it’s constantly threatened by human intervention.

Barnet Council is appealing for volunteers to give advice and support to shoppers and the public on safe social distancing as lockdown is eased in High Barnet and other town centres across the borough. Online training is being offered.

This is the Green Belt north of Barnet (top left). Protected from development for two-thirds of a century, it’s now threatened by the expansion of Potters Bar and Borehamwood, ‘garden villages’ at Redwell and Rabley Green and housing at Ganwick Corner. Head north from Barnet, and you’re immediately in countryside.

Fred Jarvis, Barnet's most celebrated trade union leader - and a New Barnet resident for well over 60 years - has died at the age of 95.

Customers were welcomed back in Barnet High Street and the Spires shopping centre on the first day of the easing of lockdown restrictions on shopping. Most of the leading chains were open for business.

Just south-west of Arkley is a tract of unspoilt countryside – remarkable for its survival within London’s boundary, and the core of a new regional park being considered by Barnet Council to promote a greener, healthier and wilder Barnet.

Last month the Barnet Society launched an email consultation of its members about the current planning application to build 652 flats in the Victoria Quarter. 100% of our respondents so far are opposed to it. This would be the biggest development in the environs of Chipping Barnet for over half a century.

For the first time since the start of the coronavirus lockdown at the end of March, High Barnet's stalls market is back in business, leading the way for the re-opening of shops in the Spires shopping centre on Monday 15 June.