Privatisation is the answer for Burtonhole Farm (From Times Series)

Privatisation is the answer for Burtonhole Farm

11:13am Friday 10th July 2009 in

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Barnet Council’s plan to cut costs has been slated by Councillor Alison Moore, leader of the Labour opposition group, because it does not rule out mass privatisation’ (‘Council hopes to cut costs with major restructure’, July 2).

However, privatisation is precisely one of the solutions the scandalous situation for more than a decade at an important but little-known council property, has been and is still crying out for.

The property in question is Burtonhole Farm, tucked away on Green Belt land between Mill Hill and Totteridge, next to an also council-owned nature reserve.

Barnet Council had acquired this estate back in the Forties ‘largely for public walks and pleasure grounds purposes’.

This information is given in a 1996 council report of a ‘public’ inquiry into a hapless illegal clay-pigeon shoot club, but within wide-ranging earshot, hosted there by the council’s tenant — until the council summarily evicted the club, not the tenant — while the general public, contrary to the council’s brief, were rigorously excluded.

An administrative ‘black hole’ as the council disarmingly admitted to me when challenged...

To make partial amends, the same report gave a costed (£4 million) undertaking to rectify the exclusion forthwith.

But apparently at the same recalcitrant tenant’s behest, the council swiftly went back on this, with the result that the public are still waiting for a visible return on an investment ostensibly made on their behalf.

Once again therefore, it must be asked, (this time hopefully to better avail), ‘What has the council been up to? What business had it to take up farming anyway?’ To finally resolve this matter, it seems to me, the council should either, at long last keep its promise to the public, or else a the earliest opportunity, dispose of this precious ‘asset’ and apply the financial proceeds elsewhere to better effect.

Walter Grey, Arden Road, Finchley