News from The Barnet Society

Chants of “Our NHS, your NHS” echoed around the Wellhouse Lane entrance to Barnet Hospital as the People’s March for the NHS passed through Barnet on its way to Edmonton.

Guns & Smoke, a new American-style bar and grill at the heart of the High Barnet conservation area, is announcing that it will be opening soon – possibly by mid-September – although planning permission has yet to be obtained from Barnet Council.

Barnet Museum is drawing up plans for a possible extension to its Wood Street premises and a programme of community activities if the go-ahead is given for an archaeological excavation on the site of the 1471 Battle of Barnet.

Facelift for the Spires to be finished by the spring ready for Carluccio’s restaurant to open next summer.

Even before the completion of its fitting out, an application has been made for planning permission to almost double the size of a new private hospital which is to open in Moxon Street, High Barnet. Hadley Wood Hospital is due to open shortly and will be owned and managed by a team of local specialist consultants.

Parents of children due to start school from 2016 onwards are being urged to sign a petition to support a campaign to establish a new Church of England free school for High Barnet.

Just imagine the bustle and activity of 1898 when such was the competition in the High Street of Barnet that shoppers had the choice of eleven butchers, including one pork butcher and two poultry dealers! Today only one shop remains, the Butcher’s Hook.

British Telecom has been forced to admit that there will be another lengthy delay in providing a fast broadband service to up to 3,000 High Barnet households.

Feasibility study begins on future use of abandoned Marie Foster Home: could it become the site of a new GP surgery for High Barnet?

Barnet Council has promised that a heritage officer will carry out an inspection in Church Passage in the “very near future” in an attempt to resolve continuing disagreement over cladding on the frontage of retail premises in the heart of the High Barnet conservation area.

The Barnet Society pinpoints the sites of missing telecoms cabinets needed to deliver a fast broadband service.  The Barnet Society has identified eight sites where it believes British Telecom needs to install additional kerbside telecoms cabinets if several thousand High Barnet households are ever going to have the chance to obtain a fast broadband connection.

A long-awaited meeting between Theresa Villiers MP and senior executives of British Telecom has still left unanswered many of the questions about when – or if ever – many High Barnet residents will be offered a superfast broadband connection.

Barnet has probably more to thank the politicians and planners of the 1930s and 1940s for than any other town in north London. With protected Green Belt land on three sides, the High Barnet of today is blessed with some unrivalled countryside on our door-step.

A planning inspector has ordered that unauthorised timber cladding must be removed from the frontage of retail premises in the heart of the High Barnet conservation area. An appeal by Mr G. Cramer, owner of 1 Church Passage, has been rejected and Barnet Council has won official backing for an enforcement notice requiring its removal.

Like much of the south-east of England, Chipping Barnet is seeing a rapid rise in home extensions and offices being converted into flats.  An easing of planning restrictions has given home-owners and property developers greater freedom.  But are large home extensions an intrusion for neighbours?

Local residents who are against plans for tree-felling and landfill on the site of Old Fold Manor Golf Club off Hadley Green have been promised the support of the Chipping Barnet MP Theresa Villiers.

A planning inspector has now been appointed to consider the objections made by the Barnet Society and other local groups to the installation of unauthorised timber cladding above retail premises in Church Passage, in the heart of the High Barnet conservation area.

After a rising chorus of protest from local community and residential groups, Barnet Council has finally issued an enforcement notice requiring the removal of timber cladding to the frontage of a former cafe and shop in Church Passage, just off the High Street.

A donation of £750,000 will enable work to start this summer on the construction of a new eco-friendly environment centre for Barnet and the site clearance needed for the new Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice. Years of doubt and uncertainty about the future of the much-loved eight-acre nature reserve in Byng Road could finally be over.

An exhibition was held in mid-January to show plans for the proposed redevelopment of St Martha's Convent Junior School on Union Street prior to a planning application being made. The proposals are for 26 one, two and three bedroomed flats for older women (Older Womens Co-Housing, or OWCH!) and include shared facilities and generous gardens.