Monday 21 February 2011

Stop Press : Barnet Council withdraws report on New Jewish School from Cabinet resources meeting

Following the publication on the Barnet Leaks website of details of plans for the New Jewish school, Barnet Council have withdrawn the paper from consideration at tonights cabinet resources meeting. Nick Walkley announced this in a letter to a local resident, stating that more work was needed on the paper. I have published this letter on the Future Shape leaks website

http://barnetfutureshape.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-jewish-school-for-mill-hill-latest.html

From Mr Walkleys letter it was quite clear that the whole process was being rushed through. Barnet have made many costly mistakes rushing such papers through in the past. A typical case in point was the sale of Underhill Football ground. The resulting legal enquiry cost nearly a million pounds and the potential loss to the taxpayers of Barnet is several times that.

This blog has no objections to the concept of  a school for Jewish children in Mill Hill. We do however have many concerns about the fact that Barnet Council has a history of rushing things, not drawing up contracts properly and not paying sufficient regard to process. As a result, the whole community is left with huge bills. I completely understand the desire of parents pushing to get a good school for their children, I raised thousands of pounds to help rebuild my childrens school. I just urge those parents to make sure that Barnet Council do not botch the sale and end up with court cases, legal bills and delays due to "unforeseen circumstances".

Barnet Council always say "no one could have predicted that....." when things go wrong. I can predict one thing with absolute certainty. This isn't the only thing in Barnet which needs more time spent on it, more proper scrutiny doing and more attention to detail. Sadly whilst putting the details of this proposal on a blog will without doubt ensure that things are done properly, there are plenty of other things that will slip by.

1 comment:

baarnett said...

Co-incidentally Roger, Barnet Planning is also rushing consultation on another matter - its proposed 300,000 tonne/annum domestic waste plant at Friern Barnet, here.

The document was added to this web site today, and disappears again next Monday. You may think it is very difficult to read, given the large format and the small text. (Ask them for a large-format version!)

My reading of the stuff is that Pinkham Way will not be an incinerator, but it will make fuel for an incinerator. Somewhere.