28/05/2026
The Mayor's office just proved us right. Twice. In one day. ๐จ
For two years we've said the same thing: the Mayor's "call-in" power doesn't protect residents โ it protects the development. When a council approves a TfL scheme, the Mayor stands aside. When a council says no, the decision gets taken out of local hands.
This week, we watched it happen in black and white.
High Barnet station. Barnet Council refused five blocks of flats โ up to 11 storeys, against the seven-storey limit in the Council's own Local Plan โ on the station car park. The Mayor's office overruled the refusal and waved it through. Decided at City Hall by the Deputy Mayor for Planning, not by anyone we elected. The station loses 160 parking spaces โ just 8 kept for Blue Badge holders.
And at the hearing, residents said out loud what we've argued all along: TfL owns the land and profits from the scheme โ and the Mayor, who chairs TfL, is the one deciding whether to approve it. The body that benefits makes the final call.
The same day, the Mayor's office also overturned Barnet's refusal of 1,485 homes in towers up to 25 storeys at the Great North Leisure Park in North Finchley. Different site, not TfL โ but the council had thrown it out 8 votes to nil, and City Hall overruled them anyway. Two local refusals, overturned from City Hall, in a single day. When Barnet's councillors say no, the Mayor's office simply says yes.
They'll tell you it's about affordable housing. And yes โ Barnet needs genuinely affordable homes. But the question is where and how. Building on the commuter car parks outer-London depends on, overruling the local plan and the local council to do it โ that is a choice, not a necessity. Yes to affordable homes. No to this process, on this infrastructure, over our heads.
We know how this story ends, because we've already lived it at Edgware: 2,316 homes on TfL land, towers up to 29 storeys. The bus station โ one of outer London's busiest, around 23,000 passenger movements a day โ demolished and scattered into on-street stops. The station car park gone. And around 190 lithium-ion electric buses crammed into an underground garage directly beneath the towers โ a design the London Fire Brigade formally objected to as unsafe, warning of fire, structural collapse and toxic gas. The objection was never withdrawn. Approved anyway, against 7,000 objections.
This is one programme, rolling station by station: Edgware, High Barnet, Finchley Central, Mill Hill, Woodside Park, Totteridge & Whetstone, East Finchley, and more. Same landowner. Same template. Same loss of the parking and transport we rely on.
Here's the lesson of this week: apart, each community gets overruled. Together, we're harder to ignore.
That's why we're building a united, non-party-political Barnet residents' front โ neighbours from every affected station, sharing what we know and standing together.
Three things you can do right now: ๐ฃ Share this post โ every neighbour who sees it is one more person who understands what's happening ๐ Comment which station you're near โ we're mapping where our people are ๐ Read the full picture: https://saveouredgware.co.uk/tfl-station-tower-programme-barnet/
We said this would happen before the May election. It's happening. Let's make sure the next station has a fight waiting for it. ๐ช
โ Save Our Edgware
Barnetโs Station Sites and Tower Growth: What Residents Should Know Save Our Edgware ยท Borough-Wide Briefing Places for London โ TfL's property arm โ is systematically targeting station sites and car parks for high-density towers across outer London. In Barnet, nine TfL-owned sites are writte...
