News from The Barnet Society

Charging £3,000 to hang heraldic banners from 26 lamp standards in Barnet High Street was condemned as the latest example of the dysfunctional relationship between Barnet Council and its web of private contractors providing out-sourced services.

The Barnet Society supports the current planning applications for both a Premier Inn and relocation of the market to The Spires bandstand site – but only subject to several strict conditions. And we do so in the belief that a big opportunity could be lost.

If Barnet Council gives approval, 26 hand-painted heraldic banners are to be hung along Barnet High Street to promote the Barnet Medieval Festival – a weekend of medieval displays and re-enactments of scenes from the battles of St Albans (1461) and Barnet (1471) to be held at the Byng Road playing fields on Saturday and

Old Fold View was one of several roads in and around High Barnet that was closed off to traffic so that residents could hold a street party to celebrate the Windsor wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Barnet Borough Council is back firmly under Conservative control after the Labour Party failed to make its much-anticipated breakthrough and ended up losing five seats in the council elections.

A computer-generated image shows the proposed Premier Inn hotel and restaurant to be built on the site of Barnet Market, at the junction of St Albans Road and Chipping Close.

Nearby residents have been given an assurance that the design of the new Premier Inn planned for the historic site of Barnet Market will respect the local conservation area and will be in keeping with terraced houses across the road in Chipping Close.

If planning approval is given, a Premier Inn hotel and restaurant is to be built on the historic St Albans Road site of Barnet’s much reduced stalls market.

A new masterplan for the future redevelopment of the Barnet Hospital site is in preparation and it does include proposals for a new multi-storey car park. Royal Free London NHS Trust has already conducted an informal pre-planning application with Barnet Council on future plans for the Wellhouse Lane site.

Forcing Barnet Hospital to build an upper deck over its car park is one option that should be considered by Barnet Council in an attempt to relieve excessive parking in nearby roads.

A deep, sometimes noisy divide opened up at the Barnet Society’s election hustings over a wide range of contentious local issues including the need for affordable housing, concern over an increasing number of empty homes, the outsourcing of services to Capita and the demand for free town centre parking.

Almost five years since Barnet Football Club played its last game at Underhill, its stadium off Barnet Lane is finally being demolished to make way for a 1,200-place Ark Academy secondary school. Demolition contractors moved onto the site in the second week of January.

Young mums and their babies were out in force at a protest meeting to try to force Barnet Council to abandon its decision to close the Barnet Breastfeeding Support Service – at an annual saving to the council of £75,000.

A group of residents campaigning to stop housing development on the Whalebones farmland are investigating several options for safeguarding one of High Barnet’s much-loved green spaces.

A long-running campaign by the Barnet Society to persuade Transport for London to run a bus service from High Barnet tube station to Barnet Hospital and the Spires shopping centre has won the support of Councillor Richard Cornelius, leader of Barnet Council.

Local residents raised a glass to celebrate – and wish good health -- to the 250-year-old oak tree at the junction of The Meadway and Potters Road in support of the Woodland Trust’s “We Love Street Trees” campaign.

After protests from local tree lovers, Barnet Council finally called a temporary halt to trench digging and cable laying directly under a 250-year-old oak that commands the brow of the hill at the junction of The Meadway and Potters Road, New Barnet.

After being refused permission in January, Barnet Council’s planning committee has now approved plans for the proposed Ark Academy school on the site of the vacant Underhill stadium, former home of Barnet Football Club.

Unthinking council planners and contractors are being blamed by local tree lovers for hacking through the roots of 250-year-old oak by excavating a trench and building two concrete bases for broadband telephone boxes.

Barnet Old People’s Welfare committee fears that the demolition of the Fern Room, its day centre in Salisbury Road, to make way for a block of ten flats might well force the closure of a group that has been providing activities for Barnet’s elderly resident for the last 75 years.