Committee Formation

Grange Big Local (GBL) is a resident-led, lottery funded community project working in a small pocket of East Finchley, nestled between the North Circular, East End Road, Church Lane, and the High Road. They’ve been awarded a lottery grant of £1 million to make a positive difference to the area and it’s local residents that decide where the money goes. On Wednesday 18th November they held a zoom meeting aiming to support the formation of a ‘Friends of’ Market Place Playground group, and pledging seed funding of £40,000 to the project.

Keen attendees from this meeting formed a WhatsApp group and began discussing the next steps. Then in December 2020, news circulated that three green spaces in East Finchley, including Market Place Play Area, had appeared on a map drawn up by Barnet Council designating a total of 45 parks and green spaces across the borough as “low quality or low value”. An environmental business plan from the council proposed that some of the sites could be suitable for siting “renewable energy solutions such as batteries at substations and solar farms.” This would later be reported by the Archer newspaper.

The members of the Whatsapp group also learned that spaces which had a ‘Friends of’ group could be removed from the “low quality or low value” category. The group discussed the importance of the formation of a ‘Friends of’ group for Market Place Playground, and a number of people volunteered to be committee members. By January 2021 the Friends of Marketplace Playground Committee had been formed.

Mission Statement

The Friends of Market Place Playground strive to protect Market Place Playground as an open space which benefits the physical and mental wellbeing of our growing community.

We will work with the Council and other community organisations to deliver much needed upgrades to the current playground facilities in order to inspire future generations through play. In addition we also seek to improve the surrounding green space to create a safe and attractive environment for the use of all local residents, many of whom have limited access to outdoor space.

We (the committee) began working with our ward Councillor Alison Moore and a green spaces officer to discuss our next steps for saving and improving the space. We were advised to begin a petition and use this to attend the residents forum for Finchley and Golders Green on the 5th March 2021. The council had a preference for a paper petition, so we went with this option, but due to the pandemic we conducted this using hand gel and social distancing, with the option of email sign up, to remain covid safe. We have achieved almost 90 signatures to date, certainly enough to get us on the residents forum agenda.