News from The Barnet Society

Former Secretary of State Theresa Villiers, who was Conservative MP for Chipping Barnet until she lost her seat in last year’s general election, has been made a Dame Commander in Rishi Sunak’s resignation honours. Four of her ex-colleagues were promoted to the House of Lords.

A decade long association as a volunteer at the Rainbow Centre, the community hub for the Dollis Valley estate, has been rewarded with a Barnet Council “Inspiration All” award for Patricia Gay in recognition of her dedication and support.

Information boards celebrating the 60th anniversary of the creation of the London Borough of Barnet are on display at Barnet Museum’s shop in The Spires shopping centre and at the Chipping Barnet Library.

Barnet’s popular roadside cafe, The Hole in the Wall, will have a prominent position on the Great North Road (A1000) if Barnet Council approves plans for redevelopment of the Meadow Works industrial estate at Pricklers Hill.

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.

Revised plans for blocks of flats to be built over the car park at High Barnet tube station show that the highest would be ten storeys in height. A total of five blocks ranging from eight to ten storeys would be constructed alongside Barnet Hill with the tallest opposite the lower entrance to the tube station.

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.

Concern is growing that – nearly a month after a major planning application for 114 homes on the Whalebones fields was submitted – neighbours have yet to be formally notified by the Council. Barnet residents have until only until Tuesday 14 November to look at the plans and make their own comments, for or against.

The Victoria Quarter illustrates – barely believably – the extraordinary lengths to which some developers go these days to cram housing onto their sites.

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.

My web post on 25 September about the crucial importance of minimising carbon emissions from Barnet’s existing housing stock looked at the challenge of upgrading the environmental performance of two houses on the Council’s Local Heritage List. This post shows what can be done to a more typical home in our borough.

The Barnet Vale Festival on Sunday 25th June is a free drop-in community event at the superb but dilapidated art deco pavilion in Tudor Park, Barnet EN5.

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).

After a nine-day Public Inquiry last month in Hendon Town Hall, a Planning Inspector has dismissed Citystyle Fairview’s appeal against Barnet Council’s refusal of 539 flats on the former gasworks site.

Urgent action is needed to save 33 Lyonsdown Road following Barnet Council’s recent decision to allow its demolition. Together with local residents, the Barnet Society has been campaigning since 2017 to save this beautiful Victorian villa but the owners have used the permitted development route to apply to knock down the locally listed building.

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.

Eighteen months ago, the Barnet Society wrote that flouting of planning laws at 1 Sunset View and 70 High Street would be tests of Barnet Council’s will to enforce its planning decisions. Both owners appealed against Enforcement Orders, and both have lost. The decisions are significant victories over the degradation of Barnet’s Conservation Areas.

More than two years after Barnet Council served an Enforcement Order on the owner of 70 High Street for non-compliance with its planning permission, and eight months after he appealed against the Order, a Planning Inspector has ruled that the building must be entirely demolished and the original building After Office Hours rebuilt.

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.