News from The Barnet Society

Above is a visualisation of the new 6-bedroom house proposed by its designers, Alan Cox Architects, in secluded woodland barely 200 metres from Barnet High Street. The site is described by the applicants as ‘unkempt’, and by locals petitioning against development as a ‘wildlife haven’. The site is within the Monken Hadley Conservation Area and close to the Green Belt. Some trees have individual Tree Preservation Orders; however all the trees are protected by the conservation area status. The application is a test of Barnet Council’s commitment to protecting the environment. You can comment on the proposals until Thursday 5 February.

A short list of four or five possible locations for a new stadium for Barnet Football Club is now being considered in depth by supporters of the Bring Barnet Back campaign after lengthy discussions with Barnet councillors and planners.

High Barnet and New Barnet are two of ten districts within the London Borough of Barnet which are on a wish list of potential sites for a new Marks and Spencer food hall. M&S plans to double its number of stores across the country and has named 197 possible locations within Greater London.

Barnet Council has intervened to see if a tenant can be found for vacant community space on the ground floor of a block of flats which were built in Salisbury Road after the demolition of the former Fern Room, once the home of Barnet Old People’s Welfare Committee.

Fine period houses in their own sizeable grounds and gardens are a feature of the tree lined roads and footpaths around Hadley Green – all adding to the character of the Monken Hadley Conservation Area.

After a nearly three-hour Strategic Planning Committee meeting this evening, Barratt London’s planning application for 283 flats on High Barnet Station car park was refused on grounds of excessive height and harm to local context (see jtp Architects & Masterplanners visualisation above). It’s a magnificent vindication for the 802 Barnet residents who objected to it.

Local developer Christchurch Grove Ltd expects to submit a planning application soon to build a house within existing woodland on the east side of Christchurch Lane (see plan above by Helene Landscape and Garden Design). It raises an increasingly urgent question in Barnet: how much, if any, green space should be sacrificed for new homes?

One of New Barnet’s last remaining large Victorian villas – 33 Lyonsdown Road – is being demolished much to the disappointment of community and heritage groups who fear it will be replaced by blocks of flats.

Barnet Council has contributed to the upgrading of the rugby pitches at the Byng Road playing fields by paying for the installation of six new floodlights.

Quinta Village Green and the abandoned former Quinta Youth Club are one step closer to being brought under the control of a group of residents living in and around Mays Lane, Barnet, who have been campaigning for years to safeguard their open space and reopen a derelict clubhouse.

After a seven-year campaign New Barnet community activist Ros Howarth finally says farewell to the last remnants of the abandoned public house The Jester which was left wrecked after a fire in 2018.

Such is the depth of local concern over the continued closure of the Black Horse public house that a petition has been launched to gather support for its future to be safeguarded by Barnet Council with an order to declare it an asset of community value.

High Barnet Islamic Centre, which opened last year, extended its outreach programme of community events with volunteers welcoming over 30 asylum seekers and refugees with a full spread of snacks and refreshments.

Access for contractors’ heavy equipment has been established at the site of the former Whalebones smallholding and farmland off Wood Street, Barnet, where Hill Residential are to build 115 new homes.

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.

After several ongoing local disputes about the height and density of new blocks of flats residents’ associations have welcomed plans to build 80 family homes on the remainder of the gas works site in Albert Road, New Barnet.

Kevin Callaghan, proprietor of the Hole in the Wall Cafe – said to be Barnet’s oldest cafe – is temporarily transferring his business to the premises of the former Dory’s Cafe, another local institution, which ceased trading in the summer.  The Hole in the Wall, established in 1935 and hidden behind hoardings on the Great North

Demolition and clearance of the Whalebones smallholding and fields off Wood Street, High Barnet, has moved a step closer with developers having completed the purchase of the site for the construction of an estate of 115 new homes.

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

… or High Barnet Place, as the development proposed next to High Barnet Station is officially called (see above). But Barnet Heights would be a more accurate description of 283 flats over the whole of the present car park in blocks of 5 to 11 storeys high. Whichever, it’s the most serious threat to Chipping Barnet's character and functioning in decades. And Friday 19 September is the deadline for public comments on the planning application.