News from The Barnet Society

This peaceful spinney in Christchurch Lane is a haven of wildlife less than 200 metres from Barnet High Street – but it’s threatened by new building. How can that be? Barnet Council declared a Climate and Biodiversity Emergency in 2022. Its recently-adopted Local Plan contains policies and supplementary planning documents specifically to protect green spaces of all kinds. Mayor Khan has similar planning policies and is currently consulting on London’s first Nature Recovery Plan (LNRS) to reverse biodiversity loss. Surely the spinney’s future is safe? Worryingly, the answer is no.

Barnet Football Club has launched an appeal against the refusal of Barnet Council to approve an application to build a new stadium at Underhill.

A bumper summer crop of pumpkins, tomatoes, cucumbers and other produce is another illustration of the continuing success of GROW, the school and community farm which has been created on a six-acre field next to The Totteridge Academy in Barnet Lane.

An application has been made to the High Court to challenge the go ahead for a travellers’ caravan site on a field in Green Belt land off Mays Lane, Barnet, on the grounds that the decision was inaccurate.

Spirited opposition by a residents’ association has failed to prevent the go ahead for the development of a site for pitches for two travellers’ caravans and other buildings on a field in Green Belt land off Mays Lane, Barnet.

A 100+ crowd packed planning committee rooms at Barnet Town Hall last night for the big match – Barnet Football Club v defenders of Barnet Playing Fields, the proposed site of a new 7,000-seat stadium. After more than two hours of impassioned debate, the result was announced: 6-0 against the Bees.

In advance of a key meeting which campaigners understand will be held in mid-July, BringBarnetBack have launched a last-minute appeal to Barnet Council to give the go-ahead for a new football stadium at Underhill.

After being boarded up for the last 20 years a fresh attempt is about to be made to see whether it might be possible to get the abandoned Quinta Youth Club in Mays Lane, Barnet, refurbished or rebuilt and returned to community use.

Tucked away at a wildlife site in the Barnet green belt is an enchanting array of community gardens which were developed in the 1950s, and which played a part in the early development of organic gardening.

Reeds and other wetland grasses and flowers have been planted along the edges of flood relief drainage work in Hadley Woods which has been carried out by Enfield Council with the help of volunteers from Monken Hadley Common Trust.

After Barnet secured their return to the Football League with a decisive 4-0 win against Aldershot, supporters of the BringBarnetBack campaign hope it might strengthen the club’s chances of obtaining planning permission for a new stadium at Underhill.

Zippos Circus will be at Barnet playing fields for five days in mid-May – one of several attractions to be staged this summer at a much-prized open space where Barnet Football Club has applied to build a new stadium.

Leaflets promoting Bring Barnet Back are being distributed across the town as the campaign hots up to persuade Barnet Council to approve plans for a new football stadium at Underhill.

When responding to the debate over the two most controversial development applications to have emerged since he was elected Labour MP for Chipping Barnet seven months ago, Dan Tomlinson is insisting he will maintain his neutrality.

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.

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.

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.

May 2020 isn’t just the 75th anniversary of VE Day – it’s also exactly 75 years since the Barnet Society was founded. As if in celebration, the Hawthorn trees planted on Whitings Hill by Society volunteers 25 years ago have been decked in glorious blossom. But why was the Society founded then?

Hadley Common, thought to be the seventh largest stretch of common land in Greater London, might soon be freed from archaic legal constraints that date back over 250 years to the reign of George III.

Chipping Barnet is surrounded on three sides by Green Belt – virtually unspoiled open countryside from Hadley Wood in the east to Whitings Hill in the west and south along the valley of the Dollis Brook.