Improving our towns and neighbourhoods

Caring for our places

In our recent residents’ perceptions survey, 85% of adult residents were satisfied with their local area as a place to live, with 91% of our young people saying the same.
Our homelessness and rough sleeping strategy has led to a new Advice Aid tool which has provided an online advice service to 485 users, while our newly reformed Barnet Homeless Forum has strengthened the support we offer with our partners.
We are delivering on our target to create 1,000 new council homes by 2026, with residents moving into 249 new homes in Colindale, and the completion of 779 affordable homes in 2023/24, an increase of 68% from the previous year.
We invested £2.3m in a major upgrade and expansion of our CCTV network and celebrated the first anniversary of Barnet’s in-borough CCTV control room. We also bought a second CCTV mobile vehicle to provide a rapid response to crime and fly-tipping hot-spots.
Our community safety pop up hubs and Ward Walks for councillors give residents the opportunity to tell us about the community safety and environmental issues that matter most to them in their local area.
Our partnership with the police saw us launch London’s first ‘Clear, Hold, Build’ programme which is making a significant dent in crime on one estate.
We have delivered the third year of our Violence Against Women and Girls strategy, including the successful launch of a #HearMyVoice campaign, a Public Space Protection Order and a Safe Haven pilot in North Finchley.
Our community skips programme has been a great success, from the start of the service up to end of 2024, 372 bikes, 532 white goods, 1314 items of furniture, 863 children’s toys, and 468 textile items have been sent for recycling or reuse, rather than disposal.
We have delivered the first year of our £97m programme to fix our roads and pavements and 99% of fly-tipping has been collected within our agreed timescales.
Our arts and culture strategy was co-designed with cultural groups in the borough and saw us winning a £200k cultural impact award from the Mayor of London to deliver a Light and Flight festival in 2026.
We held our second-ever London Festival of Architecture with a programme of over 60 events and also created a Barnet Legends trail to spotlight some of Barnet’s legendary figures.
Our Fair Play maximum accessibility playground – the first of its kind in the country – was launched at Victoria Park, New Barnet, so people of all ages and abilities can play together.
A new £80,000 sensory garden, created in partnership with Barnet’s sight impaired community, officially opened at Finchley’s Victoria Park. Market Place playground in East Finchley was one of a number of parks to be transformed while the council was awarded more than £85,000 by Arts Council England to transform an overgrown space behind Golders Green Library into an attractive sensory reading garden for residents.
We completed a £1.2m tennis courts refurbishment programme to 39 tennis courts across 14 of our parks, in partnership with the Lawn Tennis Association.
Our Brent Cross Cricklewood regeneration programme continues to transform this area, with the opening of Brent Cross West train station – the first to be delivered by a council in over a decade – helping to dramatically improve the way people get about. Over 575,000 rail journeys were made to and from the station in 2024. The first residential buildings at Brent Cross Town were also completed.
The first phase of the redevelopment of Colindale Tube station took place in 2024, supported by council funding, and enabling the transformation of the area, including the building of 11,400 quality new homes.
The regeneration of Grahame Park Estate in Colindale took a major step forward following the appointment of Lovell Partnerships as the council’s preferred development partner for the northeast of the estate. The partnership will oversee the creation of new homes for affordable rent, shared ownership, and market sale, as well as new community facilities.