At its assets, regeneration & growth committee meeting on September 8, Barnet Borough Council voted to offer the former Church Farmhouse Museum to Middlesex University rent-free, on a seven-year lease, and to contribute £280,000 to the some £500,000 worth of renovations that, largely due to Barnet’s negligence, Middlesex claims are now needed. We don’t know the exact costs, as the financial implications were, as usual, considered in secret.

So what was once a much-loved cultural and historical asset, open free to all, will in future be available for most of the time solely to the staff and students of the university. There was vague talk of a limited ‘community use’, but as the community has not been consulted on what it might want, this means nothing.

Middlesex University has no expertise in dealing with a building of this age and of the importance of Church Farmhouse Museum. However, considering the council’s miserable record of neglect, and the cavalier attitude towards its legal responsibilities to listed buildings revealed by Barnet’s Tories at the committee, perhaps the move should be given a cautious welcome. Middlesex could hardly make a worse job of dealing with Church Farm’s fabric than has Barnet.

Of course, the next question is: what happens after the lease is up? Perhaps, if Barnet Council is still in existence, it might then generously allow its residents to have a museum again.

Gerrard Roots

Greyhound Hill, Hendon