User nec vi, nec claim, nec prercario- not by force, not by stealth and not by permission. The Planning Committee on Wednesday evening was being asked to determine an application by local residents to register a piece of land as a Village Green.

The piece of land in question is Greensquare Field to the rear of Briarfield Avenue N3. A housing developer has already had plans to build houses on the piece of land turned down. But local residents are determined to take no chances. They hope that the Council will register the land as Village Green. If this does happen then the land can not be built upon.

There are of course laid down criteria to be met before the Council can designate a Village Green. These arguments were rehearsed by both the applicants (local residents ) and the land owner when they addressed the Committee. One of the local residents knew the law (I think they are a lawyer), and the land owner was represented by a solicitor.

The Committee was never going to make a decision. The advice from officers is that we should refer the application to a non –statutory public enquiry to determine the status of the piece of land. Apparently the costs for this to the Council would be £5,000.00 a day.

This would be cheap at half the price (apparently). Why? Well if we did not do that and made the decision ourselves then we would be taken to judicial review with the real prospect of having huge costs awarded against us. Win win for the lawyers then.

In connection with this application we had a report on blue paper. This means it can not be discussed in public. This did not seem to bother a member of the Committee who read the contents out loud. The Officers looked on aghast.

The previous evening we had a chance to quiz the Barnet Borough Police Commander. He first made the obligatory power point presentation. Actually it was quite interesting. The committee then asked him some searching questions. It appears that Burglary rates in Childs Hill ward are one of the highest in the Capital. The police blame Romanian gangs operating out of Camden.

There was a lot of talk about gangs generally. The Commander tried to reassure us that the gangs in Barnet are pussy cats compared to gangs in south and east London. One gang that has moved into Barnet is called “the graveyard family”

Another statistic that leapt out is that only twenty eight percent of residents have confidence in the Council or the police. This is much better than the six percent of residents who have actually heard of safer neighbourhood teams.

Any way we can all look forward to a new Police initiative to be called “x marks the spot” This will involve the Police making intensive follow up calls to advise victims of burglary how to protect their homes and to also visit neighbours.

Naively I suggested that if the Police know there are so many burglaries in a single ward, perhaps they should flood the area with police. Why not I asked have a police officer on every corner. I think I heard the commander reply that this would be too risky for his officers, but by that time I was too tired to argue.