News from The Barnet Society

Homeless Action in Barnet – a leading charity assisting rough sleepers across the borough – is organising an open day at its headquarters in Woodhouse Road, North Finchley, where a highlight will be a fashion show of outfits created and modelled by some of those who are being supported.

Residents of two narrow streets of mainly small cottages and terraced homes claim they have been ignored and abandoned by Barnet Council which has imposed double yellow lines at the junction of Sebright and Calvert Roads without proper consultation.

After several years of uncertainty about its long-term future, Barnet Council has finally found new premises for the Rainbow Centre, a vital community hub for residents of Underhill and especially the Dollis Valley estate.

With the reintroduction of domestic food waste collections from homes across the Borough of Barnet, families will be making their contribution towards generating electricity and producing liquid farmland fertiliser at a renewable energy plant midway between North Mymms and London Colney.

A special 263 Sunday service to Barnet Church – in support of Comic Relief – provided bus passengers a chance to step back in time and hop on board an iconic Routemaster.

Barnet’s music lovers are in for a feast of summer events with organisers announcing programmes for concerts right through to August including an annual highlight of four evening performances in the woods beside Jack’s Lake at Monken Hadley Common.

Star Pubs say they hope that the Black Horse – now protected by metal grilles across doors and windows – will reopen by at least mid-June in time for the start of televised football matches in the FIFA World Cup. Several potential tenants are being interviewed by Star’s management team.

An application to build a six-bedroom house in a protected wood between Sunset View and Hadley Green has been rejected by Barnet Council on the grounds it would cause unacceptable harm to a woodland habitat.

Terminally ill householders in the London borough of Barnet will be removed from council tax if they qualify under a new relief scheme which takes effect in April.

Litters pickers from Barnet Residents Association fanned out across the town in one of the association’s regular clean ups – the kind of initiative which the Chipping Barnet MP Dan Tomlinson hopes will be encouraged by his new community action network.

After hearing some vociferous complaints from Underhill residents, Barnet Council has agreed to review two controversial issues – the imposition of the Underhill South controlled parking zone and a decision to abandon the existing split between private and social housing in the regeneration of the Dollis Valley estate.

Work has started on foundations for a new studio which is being built for the Barnet Guild of Artists as part of the housing development which is underway in the Whalebones fields and woodland off Wood Street, Barnet.

Imagining how the great Victorian novelist Charles Dickens might have spent an evening in the bar at the Red Lion public house in Barnet is the highlight of a new production at The Bull Theatre.

A determined community effort in Barnet Vale to rescue and renovate an abandoned former cricket pavilion at Tudor Park has achieved a major objective – and to celebrate there are new artist’s impressions of what the renovated building might look like.

Potters Bar residents have had their first chance to learn more about a proposed data centre which is to be built on an 85-acre suite alongside the M25 motorway.

Completion of the Brook Valley Gardens estate off Mays Lane – which is a regeneration of the Dollis Valley estate – has moved a step closer. Progress has been stalled since 2023, but a revised deal has been agreed with the developers and approved by Barnet Council.

Three piano recitals are to be held at St James’s Church, New Barnet, over the coming months to celebrate the departure of a baby grand piano which has been largely unused in recent years, and which is about to be rehomed.

An application has been made to Barnet Council by a housing developer seeking permission to start discussions on building up to 300 homes on 17 acres of green belt land off Rowley Lane, Arkley.

Entertaining groups of Barnet’s senior citizens to a monthly supper evening is one of the many activities organised by one of the town’s oldest charities, the Puddenecks Club. The Puddenecks are volunteers whose mission is to hold events which help elderly residents overcome the loneliness of being home alone.

Arkley residents who have been campaigning for several years to safeguard woodland in Rowley Lane were shocked to see protected trees being felled across a one-acre plot – and their anger increased still further when Barnet Council apparently failed to take immediate action to stop the clearance.