News from The Barnet Society

A massive pile of rubble, beams and planks was all that was left of Barnet’s blot of the landscape – the derelict nurses’ home for the former Victoria Maternity Hospital in Wood Street. Heavy mechanical equipment moved into the Marie Foster Centre site just before Christmas and the demolition was completed within a day.

A planning application (19/3949/FUL) has been submitted to build 152 new homes and a replacement artists’ and bee-keepers’ studio on the Whalebones site. This is probably the most significant proposal for Chipping Barnet for many years (unless the High Barnet Station development goes ahead).

A woodland walkway, a healing garden and children’s play area are among the latest proposals for inclusion in the fields and woods that make up the Whalebones estate in Wood Street, Barnet, where developers are proposing to build around 150 new homes.

Barnet Council has promised that a heritage officer will carry out an inspection in Church Passage in the “very near future” in an attempt to resolve continuing disagreement over cladding on the frontage of retail premises in the heart of the High Barnet conservation area.

A planning inspector has ordered that unauthorised timber cladding must be removed from the frontage of retail premises in the heart of the High Barnet conservation area. An appeal by Mr G. Cramer, owner of 1 Church Passage, has been rejected and Barnet Council has won official backing for an enforcement notice requiring its removal.

A planning inspector has now been appointed to consider the objections made by the Barnet Society and other local groups to the installation of unauthorised timber cladding above retail premises in Church Passage, in the heart of the High Barnet conservation area.

After a rising chorus of protest from local community and residential groups, Barnet Council has finally issued an enforcement notice requiring the removal of timber cladding to the frontage of a former cafe and shop in Church Passage, just off the High Street.