

In the feline appreciation stakes there is currently no contest in determining High Barnet’s most sociable – and safety conscious – cat.
In the feline appreciation stakes there is currently no contest in determining High Barnet’s most sociable – and safety conscious – cat.
After mounting concern about the recent loss of leading retailers, High Barnet’s shopping centre has received a shot in the arm: H&M, the leading Swedish fashion chain, has finally signed up to take the lease of a brand new store in the Spires shopping centre.
Support for Barnet Market’s annual classic car show has proved so strong that it has become a showcase event for the increasingly-popular Barnet Classic Car Club.
An announcement that had been expected in early June about a go-ahead for the Spires shopping centre redevelopment has still not materialised, and there is still no date when work might start.
A final go-ahead for construction work on a £7 million upgrade for the Spires shopping centre continues to depend on signing up an “international fashion brand”.
Continue reading Still no news on major fashion store for Spires
A guarded welcome has been given by the Barnet Society to plans for a £7 million upgrade for the Spires shopping centre. Barnet Council is to be asked to give planning permission for a two-storey fashion store and three new restaurants.
A two-storey, 24,000-square-foot new fashion store – replacing four existing shop units – will become the centrepiece of a new-look Spires shopping centre if planning permission is obtained from Barnet Council.
A Canadian investment fund is the new owner of the Spires shopping centre in High Barnet, having paid £40 million for what the agents say is prime retail space in “one of London’s largest and fastest-growing boroughs, as well as one of the most affluent”.
Almost 2,000 people visiting shops and other premises in the High Street have signed the Barnet Society’s petition calling on Barnet Council to consider offering an hour’s free parking to help the town’s retailers.
Councillor David Longstaff has joined Mrs Theresa Villiers MP and Gordon Massey, chairman of Barnet Residents Association, in opposing the Barnet Society’s petition calling for an hour’s free parking to help win back shoppers to the High Street.
Another two independent traders are being forced out of the High Street by a combination of high rents and the chronic difficulties faced by shoppers confronted by High Barnet’s expensive and inordinately complicated parking regime.
The depth of local anger, frustration and even despair at the damage being inflicted on Barnet’s shopping centre is highlighted yet again in comments in support of the Barnet Society’s petition calling on Barnet Council to allow an hour’s free parking.
A packed programme has been arranged for this year’s Barnet Christmas Fair on Sunday 7 December when, instead of traffic, there will be music and dancing in the High Street and a vast array of stalls and attractions in nearby venues.
Theresa Villiers, MP for Chipping Barnet, who is Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, admits that that even her police protection officers cannot work out where it is possible to park in High Barnet town centre.
The Barnet Society is launching a Save Our High Street appeal: our town centre desperately needs more shoppers and we hope local businesses and other organisations, as well as local residents will join our campaign.
Once again the communities of Barnet come together on the first Sunday in December, to celebrate the huge diversity of what we have to offer in our high street and surrounding area.
Saturday shoppers queued up in disbelief to read a bailiff’s notice posted on the front door of the Oasis coffee shop in the Spires shopping centre – the seventh business to have closed within the complex in recent months.
Barnet church has its clock back at last! For almost a month High Barnet residents looked in vain when needing to check the time, but the tower of the town’s famous landmark is resplendent once more.
Love Barnet’s pop-up shop at 89 High Street promoting locally produced crafts and goods had what the staff said was a “fantastic” first week’s trading.
Facelift for the Spires to be finished by the spring ready for Carluccio’s restaurant to open next summer. Building work is due to start in August constructing a new entrance to the Spires shopping centre, together with premises for a new branch of the Italian restaurant chain Carluccio’s that will have its frontage opening on to Barnet High Street.
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.
New look for Spires shopping centre: a continental cafe-style culture for Barnet High Street?
A restaurant with an outside seating area will become part of the High Street frontage of the Spires’ shopping centre if Barnet Council gives its approval.
A controversial plan to demolish the twin spires to provide a new entrance to the Spires shopping centre has been dropped after overwhelming opposition from Barnet residents and shoppers.
Two designs for a new High Street entrance to the Spires shopping centre – one of which would be without the two original spires of Barnet Methodist Church – are now on public display and open for consultation.
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.
Continue reading Theresa Villiers opposes golf course landfill
All the fun of the fair filled the High Street for the annual Barnet Christmas Fair, which many judged was the most ambitious and best supported since the event was first held twenty years ago.
A plan to deposit landfill on the golf course that takes in part of the site of the Battle of Barnet has alarmed the Battlefields Trust.
Old Fold Manor Golf Club at Monken Hadley is drawing up proposals to re-landscape the 900 yard stretch of the course which runs parallel to the St Albans Road.
Rarely has the presence of a mechanical digger been welcomed with such enthusiasm as greeted its arrival on the site of Barnet Market, heralding the start of a long-promised and much-delayed resurfacing and improvement.
Seeing contractors working on the site after so much disappointment in the past was in itself a “terrific victory”, says Chris Smith of the Friends of Barnet Market, who has campaigned so energetically on behalf of both stallholders and shoppers.
Continue reading “Terrific victory” for Friends of Barnet Market
While work is underway resurfacing Barnet Market, its temporary home is the area around the bandstand outside Waitrose supermarket at the Spires shopping centre.
Shoppers visiting the market on Saturday morning (21.9.2013) were handed leaflets announcing that at last the William Pears property group is to start its £100,000 upgrade of the site.
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