News from The Barnet Society

Big new housing developments such as Elmbank, opposite the Arkley public house, are changing the face of High Barnet – and plans are likely to be presented during 2018 for several more sizeable schemes.

There has been another indication of the growing commercial interest in, and rising value of Barnet’s Green Belt land – just as Arkley residents step up their campaign against local farmland being developed as a natural burial site.

Local residents, bird watchers and nature lovers are joining forces to step up their campaign against plans to develop a natural burial ground on farmland at Arkley bounded by Barnet Road, Barnet Gate Lane and Mays Lane.

Building houses and apartment blocks along a narrow, sloping 3.9-acre site, where the land falls sharply by 15 metres, is not a “builder’s dream” says Linden Home’s construction director Shawn Moore.

A 50-acre green space, open to the public from dawn to dusk, would be one of the suggested benefits of the proposal to establish a natural burial ground on farmland behind Barnet Road and Barnet Gate Lane, Arkley.

SODA – Stop the Over Development of Arkley – is a new campaign group established by local residents to campaign against plans to build what they say are too many flats and houses on the Elmbank site, opposite the Arkley public house.

In the two years since the Barnet Society began protesting about derelict NHS buildings nothing has changed. The abandoned Marie Foster Home in Wood Street is still an eyesore, and so is the fire-ravaged former nurses’ home at Arkley.