Vacant premises in Barnet High Street are providing yet another new home for squatters

Squatters have taken over empty offices in Barnet High Street -- just weeks after a group departed from a similar squat in a former restaurant.

 

Love Barnet, which campaigns to promote the town’s shops, is urging estate agents to do more to monitor the vacant properties which they believe are currently a blight the town centre. 

A “legal warning” notice used by squatters to deter eviction has been posted on the High Stret front door entrance to the two floors above the empty Harry’s butcher’s shop.

Previously these were the offices of In Touch Home Care which provided home, social and child carers.

Estate agents Julian Lewis & Co are handling the promotion of the property, advertising the two upper floors for sale and the butcher’s shop to let.

Love Barnet has alerted the agents to the squatters and the company says it aware of their presence.

A month ago, occupants suddenly departed from a similar squat in the former Spizzico restaurant, which was one of the High Street casualties of the covid pandemic and which ceased trading in 2020.

The squatters left when the Spizzico building was in the process of being sold with a guide price of £875,000.

It was advertised as a freehold restaurant with potential to convert the two upper floors into flats and to add a house at the rear of the building which is accessed via Nesbitts Alley.

The restaurant is now being refurbished and is being advertised to let.

The “legal warning” notice which the squatters posted on the Spizzico front door – and which is now appeared on the front door of In Touch Home Care – explains that it is classed as a “non-residential building” within the law.

Therefore, any claim to repossess it would have to go to the County Court or to the High Court – as the owners lack the protection afforded to householders who can ask the Police to remove squatters from their homes.

The squatters – or as they describe themselves “The Occupiers” – claim their residence of the building has protection under the Criminal Law Act, as amended by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act.