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.
Continue reading Hefty council tax bill for High Street cash machine
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.
Continue reading Shop closures and conversions changing town centre
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.
Continue reading Medieval Festival treated “appallingly” by Barnet Council
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.
Continue reading Barnet Market & Premier Inn – An opportunity slipping away
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 Sunday, June 9 and 10.
Continue reading Wars of the Roses banners for Barnet High Street
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.
Continue reading Conservatives sweep back to power in Barnet
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.
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.
Continue reading Why no upper deck for Barnet Hospital car park?
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.
Continue reading Council election candidates go head to head
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.
Young mums and their babies were out in force at a protest meeting to try to force Barnet Council to abandon its decision to close the Barnet Breastfeeding Support Service – at an annual saving to the council of £75,000.
A group of residents campaigning to stop housing development on the Whalebones farmland are investigating several options for safeguarding one of High Barnet’s much-loved green spaces.
A long-running campaign by the Barnet Society to persuade Transport for London to run a bus service from High Barnet tube station to Barnet Hospital and the Spires shopping centre has won the support of Councillor Richard Cornelius, leader of Barnet Council.
Local residents raised a glass to celebrate – and wish good health — to the 250-year-old oak tree at the junction of The Meadway and Potters Road in support of the Woodland Trust’s “We Love Street Trees” campaign.
After protests from local tree lovers, Barnet Council finally called a temporary halt to trench digging and cable laying directly under a 250-year-old oak that commands the brow of the hill at the junction of The Meadway and Potters Road, New Barnet.
After being refused permission in January, Barnet Council’s planning committee has now approved plans for the proposed Ark Academy school on the site of the vacant Underhill stadium, former home of Barnet Football Club.
Unthinking council planners and contractors are being blamed by local tree lovers for hacking through the roots of 250-year-old oak by excavating a trench and building two concrete bases for broadband telephone boxes.
Barnet Old People’s Welfare committee fears that the demolition of the Fern Room, its day centre in Salisbury Road, to make way for a block of ten flats might well force the closure of a group that has been providing activities for Barnet’s elderly resident for the last 75 years.
Plans have been announced by a developer to demolish the Fern Room in Salisbury Road, Barnet, and replace it with a new building containing ten flats as well as new ground-floor community facilities.
Barnet market stall holders are delighted by the news that the managing agents for the Spires shopping centre are planning to move the twice-weekly stalls market to the paved area between Waitrose and the bandstand.
Organisers of Barnet’s teenage market – to be launched on Easter Saturday next year – are hoping that this new attraction will match the boost to the Spires shopping centre provided by the opening of H&M’s fashion store.
New Ground co-housing, the innovative flats for older women in Union Street, High Barnet, have been declared overall winner of the prestigious 2017 Housing Design Awards – and are now up for another accolade.
To the dismay of its owner, Barnet Council has refused planning permission for a semi-derelict shop in Union Street, High Barnet, to be demolished and replaced with either a two-bedroom house or two one-bedroom flats.
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.
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Mark posted a comment on From toy shop to branch Post Office – another franchised business moves into Barnet High Street
Oliver Deed posted a comment on Co-ordinated fight back by community groups organising a united front against plans for high rise flats at High Barnet station
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graham posted a comment on Work underway to stabilise precarious brickwork in fire-ravaged Hadley Green house before reconstruction starts