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Brent Cross Town Events

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Repair Café returns to Brent Cross Town
Barnet Council’s repair café at Brent Cross Town is back by popular demand. Join us on Sunday 19 October from 11 am to 3 pm at The WorkShop, Brent Cross Town, Claremont Way, NW2 1FE. 

Every broken toaster, wobbly bike, or torn jumper that gets fixed instead of thrown away brings us one step closer to net zero. Give your stuff a second life and help cut carbon emissions. You can bring the following items to repair:

  • Small electricals (like laptops, kitchen appliances or vacuum cleaners)
  • Bicycles needing repairs
  • Clothes or textiles in need of mending

Book your free slot in advance to avoid disappointment. More details here: bit.ly/3KXbggE

Opening of Neighbourhood Square

Join us on Thursday 23 October to celebrate the opening of Brent Cross Town’s new square which will become a new meeting place at the heart of the new neighbourhood and form part of the future high street. You also won’t be able to miss the eye-catching fountain which is the centrepiece of the new space and will be switched on for the very first time.

We’ll also hear from the award-winning designers, Neon, who created the fountain as well as other special guests who’ll be joining the event. After speeches, you can enjoy live entertainment, refreshments and a portrait exhibition showcasing Brent Cross Town’s community members. More info: bit.ly/4q4j0gY

Location: Neighbourhood Square (off Aviator Drive) NW2 8AN
Time: 5.30 pm to 7 pm

Celebrate Railway 200

Railway 200 is a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the modern railway in the UK. As part of this celebration, we’re taking a snapshot of modern-day life and preserving it in a time capsule which will be buried near our very own Brent Cross West. We’re working with Thameslink to create the time capsule which will store a range of items including digital photos and videos and we’d like our community to get involved in selecting other items to secure safely inside – think “what would the future me want to discover in 100 years’ time?”. We’ll be hosting a celebratory moment to bury the time capsule on Friday 21 November around 11 am. More details of this will be shared on transformingbx.co.uk/news.

If you have any ideas for the time capsule or would like to be involved, please email transformingbx@barnet.gov.uk

Winter Lights Switch On

Brent Cross Town’s annual winter lights switch on will take place on Wednesday 26 November at Claremont Park, and like always, there’ll be lovely school choirs, speeches and refreshments.

From 4.30 pm to 6 pm

The Ratepayer

The Ratepayer was our residents’ association newsletter between 1933-1937. Its front cover stated it was 100% non-political then, as it is now.

A collection of 25 issues, that originally belonged to Mrs C A Friend of 10 Pennine Drive, was donated to the Memories Local History Group, while holding activities funded by a Brent Cross Community Fund 2021 grant. These original issues are now part of Barnet’s Archive and will soon be publicly available online through Open Barnet Data – an amazing source of information!

A Plant-astic Opportunity!

We’re looking forward to seeing you there! We need as many volunteers as possible to help.

We will be planting on the grassy island in The Vale furthest from Claremont Road.

Please bring along trowels / gloves / spades if you have them!

Tea / coffee and biscuits will be available on site — outside 207 The Vale.

We’re excited that the Mayor of Barnet will be visiting the site on Saturday at 11:30 am.

Clitterhouse Playing Fields

For those that are not yet aware, the proposed plans for Clitterhouse Playing Fields were approved with conditions at Barnet’s last Strategic Planning Committee on 4 October.

The Keep Clitterhouse Green campaign achieved:

  • Noise barriers.
  • The inclusion of the South Entrance.
  • More flood mitigating measures.
  • 1,000 free hours for community use of the pay-to-play facilities.
  • Recognition that there are serious concerns about the use of AstroTurf instead of natural grass.

We do not think these improvements go far enough.

GGERA, Brent Terrace Residents’ Association, residents’ groups from Swannell Way and Clitterhouse Estate and other nearby residents will continue to try to influence the development for the benefit of all.

Community Skips

Barnet Council continues to provide a Community Skip Service to help residents get rid of large unwanted items.

This service is free to use and is available to all residents across the borough, but you will need to prove that you live in the neighbourhood.

You can find out when the next skip will be in the area by following the links here.

B&Q Site: Barnet is Opposing

From the NorthWestTWO website …

The inquiry into Montreaux’s planning application for the B&Q site (1049 residential units, up to 18 storeys) is coming in February 2023. On 8th November, Barnet’s Strategic Planning Committee met to decide how to approach it. Council officers began as if for an appeal and proposed, basically, that as the committee had voted to approve the application last year, the council should support it at the inquiry. Seems obvious, but ….

For NorthWestTWO, Ben argued that it’s an inquiry not an appeal; the council had never issued a decision that it now had to defend; the committee had never approved the officers’ flawed report or voted on the merits of the application; a then-leading councillor had told them it was very bad but they had to vote to approve it, otherwise the Mayor of London would impose something worse. Oh, we also revealed that the draft Local Plan, which supported the development, is in trouble.

For the Railway Terraces, Jessica expanded on that and on just how bad the development would be for the Terraces and all Cricklewood. Councillors Schneiderman and Clarke spoke strongly against it too.

The committee voted 1:6 against the officers proposal, i.e. against supporting the application.

It didn’t end there. Pretty soon the officers had worked out an alternative proposal and that was carried 6:1, with cross-party support. Barnet’s position at the inquiry will be, in part:
The proposed development and the parameters sought, by virtue of the excessive height, scale and massing would result in a discordant and visually obtrusive form of development that would demonstrably fail to respect the local context and its established pattern of development, to the detriment of the character and appearance of the area and the setting of the adjacent Railway Terraces Conservation Area.

We’re very pleased. We still want to join in at the inquiry, there’s even more than that to be said, but it won’t be the residents against Barnet and the developers. The council is now with us.

B&Q Site: Approval on Hold

Our neighbours in NorthWestTWO advise …

Barnet Council have been told not to approve Montreaux’s application yet, to give the Secretary of State time to decide whether or not to get involved.

The letter went to Barnet last Friday. The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities “hereby directs your Council not to grant permission on this application without specific authorisation. This direction is issued to enable him to consider whether he should direct … that the application should be referred to him for determination.”

So as things stand, the Secretary of State (Michael Gove) hasn’t decided yet whether to call it in.

If he does call it in, then an inspector will carry out a public inquiry and make a report with recommendations. The Secretary of State would then grant planning permission or refuse the application. That’s how it usually goes, anyway. We’re not experts but we know it varies – sometimes the Secretary of State will invite further representations after the inspector’s reported, for example.

If he doesn’t call it in, Barnet will be free to go ahead and issue approval – the planning committee voted to approve it last September, and the Mayor of London has told Barnet he’s not getting involved.

More details here.

Friends of Basing Hill Park

We were pleased to learn about the recent launch of The Friends of Basing Hill Park.

They write …

Basing Hill Park is owned and managed by Barnet Council and open to the public. In addition to the existing Council support for upgrades and maintaining the Park, we wanted to provide the space with even more love, care and attention. So a small group of local people who use, love and live nearby our Park have recently set up The Friends of Basing Hill Park, a charity to help improve the Park for the enjoyment of all our users.

We all want to make Basing Hill Park a safer, more attractive, well-resourced and well-maintained place for everyone. And we’d love YOU to join us!

The Friends was established in November 2021 by Gaby Friedman, a local resident who has lived very close to the Park all his life and now visits it almost daily. Gaby chairs the Friends, supported by his fellow committee members who all live locally: Antony Dawodu (also chair of The Hope of Childs Hill); Aspi Dimitrov (from Herts Baseball Club), Ashley Fleischer, Julia Hiller and Annabel Ries. The Friends of Basing Hill Park is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) registered with the Charity Commission (number 1197809), of which Gaby, Ashley and Julia are the trustees.

The more Friends there are, the more influence we will have to raise various grants to invest into the Park, whether that’s from Barnet Council, the National Lottery, Argent Related, or others.

You can be as involved as you want. You can simply sign up, sit back and relax! Or you can offer your time and skills by suggesting ideas, helping at an event or joining our committee.

To become a Friend all we need is your name and email address; send us an email or join our Facebook group (links below)! Once we have your details (which we assure you we will only use for this purpose), you can proudly declare yourself a Friend of Basing Hill Park!

We have set up an Amazon Smile account for The Friends of Basing Hill Park. If you use smile.amazon.co.uk/ch/1197809-0 for any Amazon purchases, 0.05% will go to our charity. So please use this link, search for ‘Friends of Basing Hill Park’ and spread the word!

We are working closely with Barnet Council’s Green Spaces team and our local councillors, building connections and suggesting improvements that can be made to Basing Hill Park. We will also apply for grants to raise money that will help us meet our objectives. We’ll keep everyone updated in our newsletters, which all Friends will receive by email.

Contact info