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The report will go to Urgency Committee for consideration on Friday, 30 November. The proposed agreement will also simplify procurement by ending gainshare. This means that from April 2018, the council will keep 100 per cent of all savings achieved through better procurement. Gainshare payments to Capita last year were around £2million.

Spring water was found at this location hundreds of years ago and was thought to have healing properties. The esteemed diarist Samuel Pepys made the pilgrimage to Barnet in 1664 ‘to see the Wells’. He drank five glasses of well water before departing, pleased to see his ‘waters working at least seven or eight times upon the road’ home. In 1937, the Council built a Tudor-style well house, which by 1998 had fallen into disrepair and was on Historic England’s ‘Heritage at Risk’ register.

The sites in New Barnet and Barnet Copthall will contain state-of-the-art facilities for the community to enjoy. Councillor Sachin Rajput, Chairman of Adults and Safeguarding Committee and Lead Member for Sport and Physical Activity, said: “This is an extremely exciting project. We are fortunate to have been able to invest so much in the creation of these top-notch facilities for our borough. It is something we should all be proud of. I can’t wait to see them open their doors next summer.”

*FRIDAY 16 NOVEMBER, 5.30PM* The majority of the 350,000 collections scheduled for last week were completed. Where collections have not been completed we will be working over this weekend to carry these out as quickly as possible. If your bin has not been emptied as scheduled, please leave it at the boundary of your property and we will collect it as soon as we can. We are working hard to ensure that these changes go as smoothly as possible and thank you for your patience and understanding.

Approximately 60 residents were safely evacuated from their homes following the fire in the early hours of Wednesday, 7 November. No one was injured during the fire. Residents from one of the two blocks affected by the fire were allowed to return to their homes on the same day. Residents who live in the other block were unable to return to their properties.  The cause of the fire is still being investigated and will be confirmed by the London Fire Brigade.

Barnet Council discovered 13 tenants living in the house in Hillside Gardens, Edgware, after complaints about waste storage and nuisance behaviour were made to its Community Safety team. An eight-month-old baby was found living with a couple in a converted loft accessed via a steep, twisting staircase with no handrail or lighting, leading to a low-ceilinged landing.

Throughout the week, officers from the council’s Corporate Anti-Fraud Team (CAFT), and other council officers, will be carrying out a range of activities to raise awareness around the impact of fraud and other crime, what to look out for, and how to report it. It is estimated that the cost of fraud nationally to local authorities is around £2.1billion every year.  Barnet’s dedicated counter-fraud team, CAFT, work to protect the public purse and detect, disrupt and investigate those intent on committing fraud.

Residents from one of the two blocks affected by the fire were allowed to return to their homes on the same day. Residents who live in the other block were unable to return to their properties.  Suitable alternative accommodation has been provided to these residents. The cause of the fire is still being investigated and will be confirmed by the London Fire Brigade.

The display in the atrium of the Town Hall offers a fascinating insight into the men who lost their lives in the Great War and the local area’s historical connection to the conflict. One of the exhibits on show highlights the names of 1,500 local servicemen who fell, listing them by the areas and streets of the borough in which they lived. ‘The Men that Marched Away’ is the culmination of three years of research by Local Studies Centre volunteers who pieced together obituaries from the three local newspapers which were in existence at the time.

As part of the campaign’s ‘faces of Barnet’ art project, shoppers had their photo taken in the Barnet Council photo booth before leaving a comment to say what they love most about living in the borough’s diverse community. Students from Friern Barnet's Holly Park Primary School choir sang for shoppers at the event and also took part in the campaign themselves.