Proposed new multi-use sports hall at Queen Elizabeth’s School will be available for hire by Barnet community sports groups

Plans are being prepared to seek approval from Barnet Council for the construction of a new sports hall and ten classrooms at Queen Elizabeth’s School.

Fund raising will start next year if permission is obtained for what the school says is part of a continuing programme to upgrade facilities within its existing site off Queens Road.

QE Boys – as its is still known locally – is a state-funded grammar school for boys with an annual intake of 192 pupils, a figure which will remain unchanged.

The new sports hall will be available to hire for community use – as is QE’s swimming pool and new recital hall – during evenings, weekends and school holidays.

A former music block next to the swimming pool – see above – will be demolished to make way for the new sports hall which will look out onto the school rugby field at the rear of the main QE building.

The new four-storey building will have changing rooms on the ground floor, a high ceiling multi-use sports hall with ten classrooms on the top floor.

The layout will accommodate basketball, five-a-side football, badminton and table tennis.

Other sports improvements will include additional fives courts and cricket nets.

To meet growing curriculum demand QE will refurbish and provide additional science laboratories.

Richard Henley, of planning consultants HGH, told the Barnet Society, the improvements to sporting and other facilities were all being made within the site of the existing school buildings.

“It is a tight campus which explains why have to intensify the use of existing buildings and those areas which can be redeveloped.”

QE, which was named the 2026 State Secondary School of the Year by the Sunday Times, says that if planning approval is obtained by early next year, fund raising will begin immediately.

Applications will be made for government financial support and sports grants and an appeal launched among ex-pupils. The aim would be to start construction in 2028 and complete the work in 2929.

When a presentation of the plans was held at the school, residents in nearby roads – Regina Close, Elizabeth Close and Queens Road – expressed concern about the additional traffic and parking that the sports hall would generate out of school hours.

They claimed the school already did nowhere near enough to control traffic on school days when numerous coaches and cars deliver pupils from a wide catchment area across north and west London.

“This expansion of the school’s facilities is not fair on nearby residents. The new sports hall will double the evening, weekend and school holiday traffic yet Queen Elizabeth’s does little if anything to ask parents and visitors to respect those living in the neighbourhood,” said one of the school’s neighbours.