Hi everyone!   Firstly, many apologies for the radio silence. The farm team have been busy and we have a few updates for you.   1.) Planning permission and the bats! We have now completed our bat survey and the ecology report has come back with some recommendations. The good news is the café should not impact any bats that are roosting in the farm buildings so this should not be a stumbling block for planning.  We’ve submitted the report to the Barnet planning department and we’re waiting to hear back about next steps. Hopefully, we will get permission in the next few weeks. 2.) Pledges: Most of you will have received email notifications from Spacehive over the last few weeks saying that they have deducted your pledges through PayPal and GoCardless. We know there are a few outstanding payments but most of the money should have been collected by now. The Farm Project has not received any of the monies yet as GoCardless and Paypal hold onto the pledges until planning permission has been granted. Once permission has been received the money will be transferred across to us and we can start to make headway in terms of commissioning a construction partner and buying materials. We will of course keep you posted on how things progress. 3.) Good Growth Fund. You may be interested to know, that we are in the process of commissioning a consultant to develop a feasibility study and strategic delivery plan for the wider farm site. This is being funded by the Mayor of London Good Growth Funding. This is a very important piece of work and will help build the case for our plans for the rest of the farm buildings. We will send you updates on this as and when we have them. 4.)Farm Garden: The garden is going from strength to strength and any of you have visited recently will have seen that we have made great progress with a new seating area and pergola and the spring bulbs are starting to bloom (see attached photo). We’re open Mondays 10-11am, Fridays, 9-11am (we have school groups between 11am-2.30pm) and Saturdays 10am-1pm. But please check social media (links below) for latest updates. We are always looking for new people who want to join the garden team so please email patrick@clitterhouse.com if you’d like to find out how you can get involved. 5.)Existing café: As we are still waiting for planning permission to come through before we can begin construction on our expanded café, we have decided to temporarily reopen the existing café every Saturday from April onwards. If you are keen to support the running of café, either by becoming a trained barista, by donating home-baked goodies or have another skill to offer then please email Paulette on paulette@clitterhouse.com    That’s all for now. We’ll endeavour to send out more regular updates and hopefully our next message will be telling you that planning permission has been approved. Thanks again for all your support and generosity. The Farm Team. www.clitterhouse.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/clitterhouse Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/chfarm