We have a new chairman on the Finchley and Golders Green Planning sub Committee. Or, I should say that the previous vice chairman has swapped places with the previous chairman. Otherwise the make up of the Committee has not changed.

The meeting on Monday evening meandered along. The highlight was an application in my ward. A large development is going up at the junction of Hodford Road and Finchley Road. This site has been subject to multiple applications going back, it feels like twenty years.

Now that it is almost completed the developers want to build an extra flat on the fifth floor. Residents were not happy. One speaker described the proposal as a large lump on top of an elephant, or the straw that broke the elephants back.

The applicants described the proposal as a “penthouse”. He then justified the additional unit by arguing that the Borough was not meeting its housing targets. So there you have it what Barnet needs is more penthouses.

The committee tried its best to find a reason for refusal but as usual the planning laws ruled ok.

On Tuesday I was at St Agnes Roman Catholic School in Cricklewood. This was for a meeting of the Governing Body. The school is over-subscribed for the forthcoming academic year. It wasn’t long ago when the School was scratching its head over the diminishing number of Catholic children in the diocese. Of course the school used to depend on attracting children from the largely Irish catholic community in Cricklewood. Now it is east and central European children that are boosting the school role.

My busy week continued at the Standards Committee meeting on Wednesday evening. The committee agreed to a proposal to put the register of members’ interest on the Council’s website. At present the details are kept on hard copy. These can be inspected at the Council offices by appointment. Apparently the Council has had around ten requests to inspect in the past four years.

I wound up the week on Thursday at the Business Management Overview and Scrutiny sub Committee. This is the committee which often provide the best bits for this blog. It came up trumps again. This Committee has a new Chairman.

The main item was the Local Development Framework Core Strategy. This is ready to go out to public consultation. The Committee was being given the opportunity to comment. It is a very important document and will set the ground rules for future planning development in the Borough. There is a new Cabinet Member in charge of all of this. He has switched portfolio so is no longer in charge of the sheltered housing project (which had you may recall had upset him).His responsibility is Housing Planning and Regeneration.

Unusually there was a member of the public who had requested to speak. He was concerned about the proposals for two new superstores in East Barnet. He could not understand why, despite all the leading candidates standing in East Barnet Ward at the recent Elections (including the successful Conservative candidates), strongly opposing any further new superstores. The Framework still was not ruling this out. Answer came there none.

The committee was interested in the transport section of the document. The new Cabinet Member for Environment (the former Mayor) had already declared elsewhere that his brief is all about “roads, roads and roads” So what is the view of the The Cabinet Member for “Housing Planning and Regeneration”? Well he was quite clear “cars are the transport of the future”. So now we know the true direction of travel of this new Conservative Administration.

The Development Framework was a long and detailed hundred odd page document. Suddenly a couple of us realised there must be pages missing. Sure enough further enquiries revealed that there were another thirty eight pages which had not been provided to us. By this time most of us had lost the will to live. Officers promised to send us the missing documents by email. You could not make it up.