News from The Barnet Society

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.

Barnet High Street’s historic Brake Shear House complex, which is boarded up ready for demolition, has gained a temporary reprieve, and former tenants of workshops and offices are being offered fresh short-term leases.

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.

Up to forty jobs might be lost if planning permission is approved for the construction of two blocks of flats on the site of car repair workshops and other light-industrial premises at Meadow Works, midway between High Barnet and Whetstone.

Transport for London is facing concerted opposition to a proposed reduction from 15 minutes to 20 minutes in the frequency of the 384 bus from Quinta Drive, Barnet, to Cockfosters.

CHIPPING BARNET HIGH STREET – PROPOSED PEDESTRIAN IMPROVEMENTS: BARNET COUNCIL PUBLIC CONSULTATION, 28 MARCH – 20 APRIL 2017 Comments by the Barnet Society, April 2017 The Barnet Society supports the general intention of the latest Council proposals.

After years of neglect and decay, Historic England has commissioned a detailed survey of the work required to repair and conserve Barnet’s historic physic well, in Well Approach, just a short walk from Barnet Hospital.

A two-hour session of play and activities once a month at the Sense Touch Base, just off Barnet High Street, is a lifeline for children who are often isolated at home caring for sick or disabled parents.

Graffiti daubed on walls and the sides of buildings in and around High Barnet has become an increasing eyesore in the opinion of residents who ask the Barnet Society why there has been no attempt in recent months to mount a clean-up.

Chipping Barnet library will operate on a partial self-service basis during April and May before closing again on Monday 5 June for extensive internal construction work over the summer months to convert some of the building into commercial office space.

Barnet Council’s planning committee has voted unanimously to reject plans to build a massive all-through academy school on the site of Barnet Football Club’s former stadium at Underhill.

After years of uncertainty about its future, Barnet Museum is finally being promised security of tenure – a 125-year lease at a peppercorn rent. Barnet Council’s asset, regeneration and growth committee agreed the move at its most recent meeting.

Outraged Barnet book lovers staged a mass read-in outside the closed front doors of Chipping Barnet Library to demonstrate their dismay and anger at the downgrading of a much-loved community asset.

If residents are prepared to back a mass campaign of objection, the Barnet Society believes there might still be a chance to limit, if not prevent, the downgrading of Chipping Barnet Library.

Barnet Council is being urged by the Barnet Society to postpone the two-month temporary closure of Chipping Barnet Library planned to take effect as from Monday 5 December in order to allow time for further consultation on the building alterations and redundancies that have been proposed.

Bats, owls, wrens and hedgehogs are among the species that nearby residents fear might be disturbed or even lost because of the construction of a new, two-storey leisure centre in the Victoria Recreation Ground off Lawton Road, New Barnet.

The Barnet Society has joined other local organisations and groups – together with many nearby residents – in lodging an objection to the plans to build a school for 1,680 pupils on the site of the former Barnet Football Club stadium at Underhill.

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.

The Barnet Society’s long-running campaign to try to secure a short period of free parking at the 63 parking meter spaces along the High Street featured prominently in Dom on the Spot, BBC television’s latest series about the people whose job it is to hand out on-the-spot fines.

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”.