Cllr Zahra Beg, cabinet member for equalities, and the voluntary and community sector

Cllr Zahra Beg, Barnet Council's cabinet member for equalities, and the voluntary and community sector — Cllr Zahra Beg

When Barnet’s Labour administration was elected in 2022, one of our key promises to residents was to tackle inequality.

Two years on, despite a cost-of-living crisis that has stretched the council’s resources and left many of our residents struggling, we’re more determined than ever to achieve that goal.

In May, the council approved our Towards a Fair Barnet Roadmap to help us build a borough where everyone can lead a good, healthy, happy and long life.

We’ve developed the roadmap in partnership with our residents, based on what they told us about their experiences of discrimination and their vision for a more equal borough.

The challenge

Barnet is the second-largest London borough by population, home to more than 389,000 people.

Although it contains some of London’s most affluent areas, three of our wards – Colindale North and South and Burnt Oak – are classed as deprived. Rates of deprivation affecting children are higher than the London average in Burnt Oak and Colindale. In Colindale North, more than one in three pensioners are living in poverty.

Those living in the most deprived areas of the borough are likely to live 6.7 years less if they are a man, and 5.7 years less if they are a woman, than their neighbours in the most affluent wards – and for women, the gap has been widening.

Our plan for change

Towards a Fair Barnet will tackle these challenges and the many other forms of inequality experienced in the borough.

To do this, we’ve changed our approach. Instead of focusing on individual problems, we’ll consider each person as a whole and recognise the other challenges they face. That way, we can get a better understanding of each individual and improve our support for them.

Where people live can affect their life chances, with some residents facing poorer access to infrastructure and services. So, we plan to work with local communities and public, voluntary and community sector partners to agree shared priorities for neighbourhoods experiencing the greatest inequalities.

Pollution and climate change have the potential to worsen inequalities further, so we’ve pledged to become a net zero emissions borough. But we want to do so without having a negative impact on our residents, so we’ll review the impacts of climate policies to ensure they do not fall unequally on different groups of people.

How we’re helping

We’ve already started the journey to a better borough and are investing millions of pounds in some of our most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. In Colindale, the council secured £29.5m of Levelling Up funding to create step-free access and other improvements at the Underground station.

We’ve invested more than £6million in parks in the Colindale area, and we’re looking to bring forward general improvements to walking, cycling, public amenities and community infrastructure.

Reducing inequality is also about empowering residents, so we’ve launched information campaigns to help people improve their lives.

The Barnet Financial Calculator, promoted through our Money Worries campaign, has so far helped more than 10,000 residents across the borough identify over £8million in unclaimed benefits, and our recently-launched Go Lean, Go Green, Go Bean campaign helps people to eat more healthily on a budget.

There’s still a long way to go to make our borough a more equal place. Our next step will be to create an action plan to support the delivery of our work, and we’ll report publicly on our progress through our annual equalities report.

There is no simple solution to reducing inequalities. But by working together with our residents, our new approach will build a fairer borough where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

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