News from The Barnet Society

A joint approach is being made by local groups to try to ensure that the new office block to be built as part of the Brake Shear House redevelopment, just off Barnet High Street, includes as much affordable workspace as possible.

Planning approval has finally been given for the demolition of one of High Barnet’s worst eyesores, the derelict blocks of nurses’ homes opposite the Arkley public house. After a protracted planning dispute, Linden Homes has gained permission from Barnet Council to build 114 homes, a mix of flats and houses, on the 3.9-acre site.

SODA – Stop the Over Development of Arkley – is a new campaign group established by local residents to campaign against plans to build what they say are too many flats and houses on the Elmbank site, opposite the Arkley public house.

Opposition is mounting to the possibility that 14 acres of woods and farmland at Whalebones, between Wood Street and Barnet Hospital, might be zoned for housing and community use.

Responding to fears about the possible zoning for housing of the woods and fields around Whalebones Park, the Chipping Barnet MP Mrs Theresa Villiers says she is ready to “lie down in front of the bulldozers” in any fight to preserve a cherished open space.

Volunteers at Barnet Museum say they are shocked and dismayed that after months of discussion Barnet Council’s planning committee has refused to approve proposals for a rear extension and disabled access.

Trustees for the Gwyneth Cowing estate have given an assurance to the Barnet Society that any development of Whalebones Park for residential and community use would be of “high quality” and would retain as “much natural habitat as possible”.  In the two weeks since the Society first reported that an application has been made for outline

Whalebones Park, a 14-acre stretch of fields and woods between Barnet Hospital and Wood Street, is about to be considered by Barnet Council as a possible area to be developed for future housing and community use.

Plans for a five-storey block of flats and a three-storey office block are the main features of an extensive residential and commercial redevelopment that will reshape the townscape behind shops in Barnet High Street.

After a determined campaign by local residents the “mighty oak” of Whitings Road has been saved from the axe. Barnet Council has approved a tree protection order and, more importantly, has agreed to change its plans for the approach road to a proposed housing development on land next to Whitings Hill Primary School.

A campaign to save what has been dubbed the “mighty oak” of Whitings Road has made significant progress.

The Club’s application for major re-landscaping has been submitted to the planners. The Barnet Society is minded to support it – but only subject to tough planning conditions. The Society Committee has agreed a draft response.

You’d think that planning controls in the Green Belt and Conservation Areas would be stricter than elsewhere. No longer. Two premises in Chipping Barnet – one a pair of barns in the countryside between Mays Lane and the Dollis Brook, the other our former Town Hall in Union Street – are being converted to residential use.

Barnet Football Club’s vacant stadium at Underhill is to be demolished to make way for a proposed new free school – Ark Pioneer Academy – that would eventually accommodate more than 1,800 pupils.

Work could start as early as January next year on High Barnet’s largest housing development since the opening of the Dollis Valley estate. If planning permission is obtained, Linden Homes plan to construct over 100 new homes on the vacant Elmbank site that extends from Barnet Road, Arkley, almost to Barnet Hospital.

A scheme to re-landscape much of the Old Fold Manor Golf Club at Hadley Common that involves felling mature trees along half a mile of the St Albans Road needs to be explained in much greater detail before being granted planning permission by Barnet Council.

A group of feisty women, happy to be renowned for their stubbornness, gathered in Union Street, Barnet, for a ceremony marking the start of construction on a unique project – the first purpose-built co-housing scheme of its kind in the country.

Planning vote goes against Guns & Smoke.  Guns & Smoke, a new American-style bar and grill opposite Barnet parish church, has failed to obtain planning permission for its illuminated frontage in Church Passage.

Guns & Smoke, the new American-style bar and grill opposite Barnet parish church, faces what looks like being a decisive shoot-out at Hendon Town Hall early in the new year.

Green Belt surrounds Chipping Barnet on three sides, and the Barnet Society was founded in 1945 to protect it.  As London grows, we believe it – and the natural landscape adjoining it – is likely to be even more appreciated.  But while the Society’s default setting is to oppose any development on or next to