St Barnabas Church, North Finchley

St Barnabas Church, located in North Finchley within the London Borough of Barnet, sought advice on the disposal of their existing church and adjacent land. The church sought to dispose of the site in order to generate funds to facilitate the relocation of the church to a larger and more suitable property.

DWD provided planning feasibility advice on the site’s development potential, including on the change of use of the existing locally listed church to residential and the redevelopment of the adjacent land to provide a block of residential flats.

DWD was appointed to market the site. We undertook an extensive marketing exercise, which generated interest from well in excess of 100 parties. DWD received a number of offers to acquire the site, on both an unconditional and subject to planning basis. We met with the shortlisted parties to consider their proposed terms, to assess the planning feasibility of their proposals to quantify the risk to our client.

Terms were subsequently agreed to dispose of the site on a subject to planning basis. DWD worked closely with the client and appointed solicitor to agree the terms of the sale and to ensure the agreement allowed St Barnabas Church to progress forward with their ambitious plans to relocate. DWD has closely monitored the purchaser’s planning application, on behalf of St Barnabas Church, which was approved in September 2017.

DWD advised the London Diocesan Fund (LDF) on the purchase of Solar House a 36,000 sqft office building located on High Road, N12. The LDF financed the purchase of Solar House for St Barnabas Church. Part of which has been sold to a third party and the majority retained for church use.

Completion took place in March 2018, which has enabled St Barnabas Church to commence construction works at Solar House, where the church will be relocating to later in 2018.

Please contact Richard Greeves or Emma Penson for further information.