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This month marks one year since the council officially opened its revamped CCTV control room following a £2.3million investment in expanding and upgrading the borough’s CCTV network to clamp down on criminal and anti-social behaviour.

To mark World Mental Health Day, Thursday 10 October, Barnet Council has launched a new mental health and wellbeing strategy designed to promote the mental wellbeing of children and young people. The strategy was created following consultation and engagement with residents, youth and parent groups and using insights from national and local data.

Barnet Council has appointed Naisha Polaine as Executive Director of Growth to lead some of London’s most ambitious regeneration programmes. The council has one of London’s most ambitious growth strategies, with major development and regeneration schemes taking place in neighbourhoods across the borough, including the new £8bn net zero Brent Cross Town.

Barnet Council has successfully prosecuted a shopkeeper for selling vapes to an underage teenager, resulting in a penalty of nearly £2,000. Dr Rizwan Manzoor Hussain, of The Lindens, Friern Park, was caught selling a vape to an underage teenager at Vape City London in Finchley during a routine inspection by council officers.

Barnet will mark Hate Crime Awareness Week (12 to 19 October) with a series of events and engagement opportunities designed to promote the message that ‘hate has no place in Barnet’.

Barnet Council has unveiled a new playground in East Finchley transforming it into a green, modern park for the whole community to enjoy, as well as contributing to Barnet’s NetZero aspirations. It’s been a four-year journey from the original imaginative vision, through extensive community consultation and the design, fundraising and build phases to deliver the transformation of this historic bit of East Finchley.

Barnet Council’s Leader has welcomed the government’s budget calling it “a step in the right direction for Barnet” but warning that there is still more work to be done to stabilise the council’s finances.

Barnet residents and visitors are urged to stay vigilant before and after parking in the borough after a triple whammy of scams targeting drivers were identified by the council. One scam involves one or more people causing a distraction while you are paying for parking, stealing your card, then claiming it has been swallowed by the machine. Sometimes they will claim you should use another card, and then repeat their crime. It is not possible for your card to be swallowed by a council parking machine.

Barnet residents will have the chance to pay their respects to those who have died in conflicts around the world at Remembrance Day services across the borough this weekend. Services and parades will take place in solemn commemoration this Sunday 10 November, as well as on some other days around that date.

As Leader of Barnet Council, and as someone who calls Barnet home, I am proud of the borough’s diverse communities knitted together by close ties, which mean that people of all backgrounds get on well. We are a designated Borough of Sanctuary and actively oppose hate crime, which sadly all too often targets our faith communities. This Islamophobia Awareness Month, I call on all Barnet residents to pause and reflect on what they can do to tackle Islamophobia.