News from The Barnet Society

The deadline for comments on the planning application to build 114 homes on the field shown above is Tuesday 12 December. Barnet planners have already built them into the draft Local Plan, and we must work on the basis that they are likely to recommend approval of the plans.

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.

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).

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 An earlier application for a gas peaking plant nearby was withdrawn last year.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.

Chipping Barnet is a great base for some glorious countryside walks, and the best are described in Rambles Round Barnet – two volumes published by the Barnet Society. The good news is that Volume I has just been reprinted in a limited edition.

The Barnet Society’s AGM on 1st July gave me the opportunity to highlight the range of work we have done in the past, and continue to do, to enhance Barnet’s green environment.

A rubberised footpath around the perimeter of the Byng Road Nature Reserve will finally allow wheelchair users and people with disabilities and limited mobility the chance to visit a highly popular natural trail.

Evidence of a fresh sewage spill in Dollis Brook was an unexpected - and unpleasant - find when the DollisBrookers carried out their first litter pick along Barnet's Dollis Valley Greenwalk.

Fly tipping of garden rubbish and even builders' rubble has become a worrying problem along the edges of Monken Hadley Common - and the worst offenders are a few of the owners of the priciest properties in roads such as Parkgate Crescent, off Camlet Way, and Fairgreen, off the Cockfosters Road.

Dollis Valley Greenwalk, one of Barnet's precious green open spaces, is about to get some extra care and attention from volunteers anxious to enhance its biodiversity and ensure its future wellbeing.

Every Sunday this winter St Mark’s Church, Barnet Vale, becomes a night shelter for the homeless – “our contribution to helping the weakest”, says the Vicar, the Reverend Tristan Chapman.

Efforts are underway to identify and map the many alleyways and footpaths that add so much to the local landscape and help make High Barnet such an attractive place to live.

Plans to replace a semi-derelict vacant shop that has blighted Union Street for many years will go a long way towards finishing off a make-over for one of High Barnet’s historic thoroughfares.

Three Barnet war memorials – at Arkley, East Barnet and Monken Hadley Common – have been given the added protection of listed building status after a review conducted by Historic England. They were each considered of sufficient special architectural or historic interest to secure Grade II listing from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

In a first for schools in the London Borough of Barnet, the Pavilion study centre in Meadway, High Barnet, is offering vulnerable and excluded school children the opportunity to get an entry level qualification in horticulture.

After facing a barrage of complaints and criticism over proposal to build a new school for almost 2,000 pupils on what was formerly the Barnet Football Club stadium, the Ark Academy network admitted its plans were “not yet a done deal”.

High Barnet’s “impossible” parking controls are forcing another independent trader out of the High Street. Hadley Hounds, a dog grooming parlour established five years ago, is having to leave and find new premises in Whetstone because difficulties over parking have proved the “final straw” for proprietor Eve Fox.

A children’s skating rink was one of the many attractions at the two-day Christmas in the Park at the Old Courthouse recreation ground in High Barnet. A series of events have been held this year since the reopening of the Old Courthouse cafe, but this was by far the most ambitious to date.