Cricklewood residents called to on as campaigners step up Hendon FC fight (From Times Series)

Cricklewood residents called to on as campaigners step up Hendon FC fight

12:02pm Friday 27th November 2009

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(1)

A GROUP of campaigners made a rallying call to residents in Cricklewood last night in a bid to stop the redevelopment of Hendon Football Club's former ground.

About 30 people attended the public meeting in Carey Hall, just a few hundred yards from the ground in Claremont Road, to discuss the campaign.

At the meeting they were told the background to the six-year campaign and were urged to help gather names on a petition asking Barnet Council to put a historic covenant back on the site.

Campaigner Morton Morris told the meeting: “This is not just any patch of land, this piece of land has got history like no other.”

Another leading voice in the campaign, Lyndale resident Dorothy Badrick, told residents they could win the battle by putting pressure on councillors ahead on next May's council elections and the selection of a new council leader after Cllr Mike Free stepped down.

She said : “ We have a change in administration coming up. This is our opportunity to make a noise.

“We have got to ask every councillor and parliamentary candidate who comes to your door about Hendon Football Club so they know it's a real issue in the area.”

Gordon Kerr, a leading green space campaigner, detailed the history of the planning application, from the lifting of two covenants protecting the land to the council's granting of planning permission.

He pointed out the permission could last “indefinitely”, as revealed by the Times Series, due to the wording on a letter sent to the developers after the 2003 application was granted and a failure to decide a reserved matters application submitted in 2007.

He told the meeting: “ The residents of Barnet are to be denied the benefit of any expiry date because the Council simply received the Reserved Matters application on time and deliberately held it in abeyance. “This is a transparent process trick to attempt to preserve the life of the consent and avoid the cost of a new application.”

When asked by a resident what was currently happening at the dormant site he replied: “I think we know. The property market is not where it was and this is a complete mess.

“I think the leadership of the council is embarrassed by it, and Mike Freer told me he is looking to do a deal for alternative use.

“I told him that's not what we want at all, we want it to be reverted.”

Last month owners Montclare Developments Ltd cleared a group of Romanian squatters from the club before brining in bulldozers to level several buildings to prevent them from returning.

One young mother told the gathering she could not find anywhere to hold her daughter's birthday parties since the youth club attached to the ground closed down.

She added: “It's part of the community in this area. My daughter's fourth birthday was last month and I looked in this area for a community hall but I was told since the football club closed down we had nothing.

“Hendon Football Club was everything to people here. It was a bar and community centre and people would come and support the football team together. How can Barnet not give us any support?

“It's heartbreaking to watch it be demolished. It's taken away a lot of happy memories for me.”

What do you think of the Hendon Football Club development? Leave your comments below.

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(1)