FROM: HENDON AND DISTRICT ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY (HADAS) Vice-Chairman 3 Westbury Road Woodside Park London N12 7NY 020-8445 2807 TO: London Borough of Barnet Strategic Service (Planning and Housing) Building 2 North London Business Park Oakleigh Road South London N11 1NP 7th January 2009 Dear Sirs LOCAL DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK BARNET’S CORE STRATEGY DIRECTION OF TRAVEL HADAS is the only archaeological society in the Borough of Barnet, and has for many decades conducted research, including a large number of excavations, throughout the borough. It is based in Avenue House, Finchley. It is concerned with the whole historic environment, and not simply that part of it which is buried. It engages with the public through lectures, events and community projects with schools. HADAS welcomes the opportunity of participating in the process Barnet Council is now embarked on of producing a Local Development Framework to replace the old Unitary Development Plan, and offers the following comments on the ‘Direction of Travel’ document which was issued for consultation in November. The comments all relate to matters omitted from, or dealt with much too cursorily in, the document. We note the references to the character of Barnet and its historic environment in the document. They are welcome so far as they go, but they do not go anything like far enough, and should have a chapter to themselves (as the natural environment has in Chapter 11) or at least a separate section in Chapter 9. This chapter or section should, in particular, outline the council’s policy on conservation areas (as the UDP did in Policies HC1 and following) and on the ‘local listing’ (as it is currently termed) of buildings of importance to the borough’s heritage and townscape character - as the UDP did in Policies HC14 and 15. It should also mention the wealth of nationally listed buildings which Barnet enjoys - Barnet is, I believe, very high in this league table among outer London boroughs. Examples of policies on these matters which Barnet could usefully emulate are in Policy 9B of the draft Core Strategy of Islington, and in SP10 of the Tower Hamlets Core Strategy. Archaeology in the narrower sense makes even less of an appearance in the ‘Direction of Travel’ document - indeed I have found none at all. This must be rectified, and it must be made clear to the people of Barnet and to developers that the Council will insist on proper archaeological investigations in advance of any development where it seems possible that there are buried remains, and that the results of any investigation will be made public. Including Archaeological Priority Areas in one of the maps would be very helpful. Another omission is of museums. There are two perfunctory mentions, one of Church House Farm Museum in the context of the library estate, and the other of the RAF Museum in the Colindale box in Chapter 7. One would not guess from this that the RAF Museum is a National Museum which the Council should be proud of having within its area. Nor is there even a mention of other museums, such as the Barnet Museum in Wood Street and the Stephens Collection in Avenue House. This contrasts pointedly with the several paragraphs devoted to the various types of open space. Although not really within HADAS’s remit, the document appears to neglect culture and the arts completely (there is not even a mention of the Arts Depot in North Finchley, let alone the various smaller arts centres). Surely they are significant in land use terms, and in making Barnet rather more self-contained, and not a mere dormitory suburb whose inhabitants look to central London for their entertainment (Chapter 12, rightly, sees local employment opportunities in such a context, and as reducing the need to travel). We ask for a chapter devoted to culture and the arts in their widest sense. We hope that the Council will follow the suggestions we have made, and that the next version of the Core Strategy will deal adequately with all these matters. We give notice that if it does not, we shall seek to persuade the Inspector that their omission makes the Core Strategy unsound. Yours faithfully P E Pickering Registered Charity No 269949 |
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HADAS' comment on Barnet's Core Strategy document - 7th January 2010posted 7 Jan 2010 03:14 by Don Cooper [ updated 7 Jan 2010 03:32 ] |