The application for a new combined school for both boys and girls was refused by councillors despite previously winning their support in 2017, reports Grace Howarth, Local Democracy Reporter

Plans for the combined school in Mill Hill (credit Hasmonean Schools)

Plans to merge a girls’ school in Mill Hill with a local boys’ school have been dashed over fears they may impact Green Belt land.

An application to demolish Hasmonean High School for Girls in Page Street and replace it with a new combined school was rejected on Tuesday (6th May).

The entirety of the proposed site, including the current girls’ school, is designated as Metropolitan Green Belt.

The new school would have been located partly on the existing girls’ school as well as on adjoining open space, which currently constitutes Copthall Fields, which is a designated site of importance for nature conservation (Sinc).

Barnet Council officers recommended the plan for refusal, saying the council lacked the information needed to assess certain habitat regulations and could be at risk of “potentially very serious breaches”.

Emily Benedek, a parent whose child attends the boys’ school, was supportive of the plans and said the boys’ school currently did not have sufficient capacity.

Hasmonean High School for Boys has two locations, one in Belsize Park in Camden for year seven and eight pupils and another in Holders Hill in Hendon. The Belsize Park school is approximately five miles away from the Holders Hill school.

Emily said this “fragmented structure” separated younger and older pupils and denied parents “locally provided education”.

Labour committee member Philip Cohen said he understood the convenience of having the boys’ and girls’ schools on the same site but asked Emily about the impact on the local environment.

She said parents were concerned about the impact but added her son having to travel “several miles every day and to a different borough” made her “deeply concerned”.

Andrew Beard, an agent speaking on behalf of the applicant, said there were no “suitable other alternative sites” other than the girls’ school.

He said: “It’s very important not to lose the fact we’re not proposing just to insert this school on to this site, the school partly exists. There was a big effort to try to keep it just on the developed land of the girls’ school.”

However, Andrew said if there was no expansion of the site, it would need to be up to six storeys tall.

Labour committee chair Nigel Young concluded that in order to develop the new school it would be necessary to remove nearly three acres of woodland and he struggled to see how an alternative plan that “still preserved that wildlife” could not be proposed.

Confusingly, the same application was approved by councillors at a previous meeting back in February 2017, with councillors voting against officers’ recommendations to refuse. However, the approval was subject to referral to London mayor Sadiq Khan because of its Green Belt impact, who then advised the council to refuse planning permission.

In response to concerns over the committee changing its position on the application, Cllr Cohen said despite the “long history” biodiversity needs “have been strengthened by legislation” since the first application.

He said: “It’s not about ‘oh we considered this in 2016’, we’re dealing with it now.”

Committee members voted along party lines, with five Labour votes in favour of refusal and two Conservatives – concerned about the committee being seen to be inconsistent – voting against refusal.

A previous version of this story incorrectly named Zoë Samuelson as the parent in favour of the plans, we apologise for this error.

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