News from The Barnet Society

Gail Laser, founder of Love Barnet, has won national recognition for the decade she has spent working tirelessly to improve trading conditions in Barnet High Street.

A planning application has now been submitted to Barnet Council for a large-scale private care home for the elderly on the Marie Foster site in the heart of the Wood Street conservation area.

Barnet Council has backed down from its decision to charge a High Street newsagent an extra £1,800 a year in council tax for having a free-to-use cash machine installed in the shop window.

A highly-controversial plan to convert empty retail premises just off Barnet High Street into a house in multiple occupation with nine self-contained rooms has been withdrawn – at least for the moment.

Premier Inns have submitted a new planning application. The design has been improved since  its first scheme, rejected in July, and the Barnet Society is minded to support it. In August, Premier Inns held a public consultation on their redesign.

Offering High Barnet residents and shoppers a free-to-use cash machine is proving an expensive nightmare for the Paper Shop in the High Street. Barnet Council has just hit the business with a council tax bill for £6,200, back dated to 2015.

High Barnet’s struggling High Street shopping centre is facing fresh challenges: another two national chains are pulling out just as plans are announced to convert empty retail premises on the corner with St Albans Road into a house in multiple occupation.

Residents of Chipping Close were out in force to express their continuing opposition to the construction of a 100-bed Premier Inn opposite their homes on the site of Barnet Market.

Charging £3,000 to hang heraldic banners from 26 lamp standards in Barnet High Street was condemned as the latest example of the dysfunctional relationship between Barnet Council and its web of private contractors providing out-sourced services.

The Barnet Society supports the current planning applications for both a Premier Inn and relocation of the market to The Spires bandstand site – but only subject to several strict conditions. And we do so in the belief that a big opportunity could be lost.

If Barnet Council gives approval, 26 hand-painted heraldic banners are to be hung along Barnet High Street to promote the Barnet Medieval Festival – a weekend of medieval displays and re-enactments of scenes from the battles of St Albans (1461) and Barnet (1471) to be held at the Byng Road playing fields on Saturday and

Old Fold View was one of several roads in and around High Barnet that was closed off to traffic so that residents could hold a street party to celebrate the Windsor wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Barnet Borough Council is back firmly under Conservative control after the Labour Party failed to make its much-anticipated breakthrough and ended up losing five seats in the council elections.

A computer-generated image shows the proposed Premier Inn hotel and restaurant to be built on the site of Barnet Market, at the junction of St Albans Road and Chipping Close.

Nearby residents have been given an assurance that the design of the new Premier Inn planned for the historic site of Barnet Market will respect the local conservation area and will be in keeping with terraced houses across the road in Chipping Close.

If planning approval is given, a Premier Inn hotel and restaurant is to be built on the historic St Albans Road site of Barnet’s much reduced stalls market.

A new masterplan for the future redevelopment of the Barnet Hospital site is in preparation and it does include proposals for a new multi-storey car park. Royal Free London NHS Trust has already conducted an informal pre-planning application with Barnet Council on future plans for the Wellhouse Lane site.

Forcing Barnet Hospital to build an upper deck over its car park is one option that should be considered by Barnet Council in an attempt to relieve excessive parking in nearby roads.

A deep, sometimes noisy divide opened up at the Barnet Society’s election hustings over a wide range of contentious local issues including the need for affordable housing, concern over an increasing number of empty homes, the outsourcing of services to Capita and the demand for free town centre parking.

Almost five years since Barnet Football Club played its last game at Underhill, its stadium off Barnet Lane is finally being demolished to make way for a 1,200-place Ark Academy secondary school. Demolition contractors moved onto the site in the second week of January.