Dear supporters, Big apologies for another long delay since our last update. We had high hopes that the next one would be full of great news and updates on progress but alas our plans have been thwarted, this time by COVID-19. During the last update, we advised you about the longstanding drainage issues under the farm site which were preventing us from laying foundations. In some positive news, we can report that through pro bono support from Amey we have had a full survey and clearance of the entire drainage system and alongside some support from Local Tool Hire Company a repair was done to a collapsed drain - which finally means we are ready to lay our foundations. While the drainage issues were being dealt with, we also made great progress on finalising cafe designs and getting building control clearance to begin work. This whole process has been a new one for us, so it’s been a real learning journey. We have definitely been regularly comparing ourselves to an episode of Grand Designs, falling into the common trap of under budget and slipping timelines. Which is frustrating when many issues are outside of our control. Anyway, we were really hopeful that if the foundations went in by end of March, all things going well, we would have been ready for an early summer opening. However, as we all know the world has somewhat ground to a halt and unfortunately Amey who had kindly offered to lay our foundations have had to stop work for the time being. With full lockdown now in place, we have had to give in to the shared reality and accept that our cafe will take a little longer to complete. We realise this is disappointing but we will do everything we can to deliver the café as soon as possible. For full transparency, we also want you to know that the £50k contribution from the Mayor of London is paid in arrears so we are expected to spend £50k first. We are also unfortunately still waiting for some remaining crowdfund pledges to be released from PayPal and Barnet council. So the unlocking the pledges to pay for the build is an ongoing challenge. Whilst some of us have been busying ourselves on pushing the cafe build forward our incredible garden team have been working hard to build a whole new herbal and sensory garden, supported by a £2k grant from the Postcode Lottery. A week before the lockdown our wonderful community came together and worked miracles to ensure that the new garden area was near completion. Already we have seen more people stop by to observe the changes that are taking place and enjoy this space. This will be an incredible resource for our community both through this crisis and beyond (see pic attached). We’ve sadly had to pause our regular gardening sessions on Fridays and Saturdays with local schools and residents. Our team are still working hard maintaining our two garden spaces and preparing the second half of the farm garden for a new much larger greenhouse which will be used to deliver workshops to schools and the community. They are growing lots of produce and flowers for the growing season ahead. Some of which we will be selling as advertised on our twitter feed. If you are interested please get in touch with Patrick Kirwan our garden manager (patrick@clitterhouse.com). He can arrange pick up outside the farm garden at a scheduled time ensuring that we are maintaining social distancing and keeping everyone safe and well. We’re hopeful that we will all be able to enjoy our garden spaces again in the coming months. We finished our Good Growth Feasibility study with architects RCKa in December and went straight into a submission process for the next round full Good Growth Fund application. Incredibly, we got through the first round of the process and were offered £1m in funding to work on a refurbishing a portion of the farm buildings. But as part of this process we had to secure a further £1m of match funding to unlock all of the funds. Unfortunately, although we’ve had very positive behind the scenes conversations we weren’t able to secure the match of £1m in time for the deadline. So, we have now been put in a pool of shortlisted projects and may still be eligible for funding if we can secure match funding in the next few months. Returning to the immediate challenge we’re all facing - for those of you that don’t know - one of overarching aims is to ‘build and support resilient and sustainable communities in and around NW London’. The question we have been asking ourselves is how do we continue to build connections and foster resilience in a time of crisis, moreover in a time of ‘social distancing’? We are a very small primarily volunteer-run organisation and in the absence of an indoor space to connect, we, like many others, are turning to the world of technology to bridge that gap. We are currently applying for a small grant to try and help us to capacity-build our volunteer pool to be able to run online meet-ups and training sessions. In short, we hope to take online some of the work we have been used to doing face to face. We have so many creative and talented people around us and we want to ensure that we can still support them to continue to share their skills with the community. In doing so we are hoping we can continue to connect with you all, indeed perhaps build new relationships that were previously not possible. We don’t know if we will be successful with this funding application so please do get in contact if you think you can help us make this happen. In addition to trying to take our offer online, we are looking at how we can ensure some of the most vulnerable amongst us get the support they need through this crisis and have joined our local UK Mutual Aid support group. It’s a simple model and has already reached hundreds of people needing support like food and prescription deliveries. By signing up onto this volunteer map http://signup.mutualaid.co.uk you can be contacted by a connector that will match you with local need. You can see who has already signed up in your area here: http://map.mutualaid.co.uk/ Unfortunately, in many areas we didn’t have time to leaflet before the lockdown and given many of our most vulnerable may not be online, the only way we can continue to spread the word is through you. If you are healthy and able please sign up to help out and if you need to stay at home please do your bit by sharing these links along with this email address for requesting help: helpline@mutualaid.co.uk and this telephone number where people can request support: 020 31 377 488. Thank you again for your continued understanding and support. Stay safe. The Farm Team PS. To keep up with our regular updates, check us out on social media: Twitter: www.twitter.com/clitterhouse Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/chfarm Instagram: www.instagram.com/clitterhousefarm

Happy Halloween to all our supporters! It's been a while since we last updated you. But fear not, we have been very busy this summer. We hope lots of you were able to enjoy our many events and activities we held over the last few months - with great food, music, art, natural cosmetics workshops, intro to bee-keeping, apple pressing, furniture building, gardening, an Open House London event, and much more. In late August we demolished our old temporary cafe and began the groundwork for the new cafe space. Sadly, we have not been able to move as fast as we would have liked as we have discovered that some of the old drains under the building have collapsed and are going to involve significant unexpected costs and works to reinstate. We have had some pro-bono support from Amey to try and uncover what work needs to be done and we're still working our way through this, but we're hopeful we can get over this hurdle soon and start construction on the new space. Meanwhile, we have continued at pace with our Good Growth Fund Feasibility study and have gone through a detailed process of working out what the future of Clitterhouse Farm could look like. We will post the full report up on our website soon for you all to see, but we've attached a photo of one of the early proposed phases of work in this update for you to look at. Most recently we have been busy submitting a series of much larger funding applications to pay for the future phases of work and for the team to deliver it. If we get through the first rounds of these applications we will be working hard to build the case for support and to bring in the millions of pounds that we will need to bring the farm back into use. Exciting times! We will post another update soon with more details on our plans for the future and of course on how we're progressing with the cafe construction. Thank you again for all your continued support. The Farm Team

As many of you will have seen from our recent newsletters, we have finally been granted planning permission. Which is great news! It has been a much longer and more complicated process than we would have liked, but we have reached an important milestone. We're now working with our architects, the council, the Mayor of London and others to get moving on the demolition of our current pop up cafe and to start construction of the new cafe space and workshops. The demolition will be happening in August and construction will continue up to the end of 2019 and into early 2020. We will send out a separate update shortly with details of next steps and key dates. Thank you again to all of you for your support and patience with us as we navigated our way through the planning process. The exciting phase of building is to come!

Hi everyone Just a quick update for all the wonderful supporters of our Farm Cafe and Workshops crowdfund. 1. PLANNING APPLICATION: As we mentioned in our last update, we submitted our ecologist’s report on the bat roost in the farm buildings. On the basis of this report Barnet have given us some restrictions on the tools we can use during construction to limit any impact on the bats, but nothing that should severely impact the project. We expected that now the report has been accepted that a final decision would be made as to whether we could proceed with the construction, but unfortunately the planning team have come back to us with new questions regarding waste management for the expanded cafe. This has meant we have had to revise our drawings again, and these now have to be put back out for public consultation. We're unsure as to why we are getting these requests for further details only now (we first submitted our application in November 2018). Suffice to say, it is frustrating that it is taking so long to get a decision made and we are eager to get going. We very much appreciate all of your patience and rest assured we will let you know as soon as we have another update. [Your crowdfund pledges are all still held by Spacehive and won’t be released to us until we have planning permission.] 2. EXISTING CAFE: As many of you know, while we are waiting for the planning permission decision to be made, we have reopened our existing cafe and have been serving lovely teas and coffees and cakes. We are open Wednesdays 10am-12pm (Stay & Play) and 10am-2pm every Saturday. For half-term next week, we have an extended Stay & Play session at the café from 10am-2pm on Wednesday 30th May. We are also pleased to say that we are now accepting card payments! ☺ 3. GOOD GROWTH FUND - FEASIBILITY STUDY: In other news, we are making progress with the feasibility study and business planning funded by the Mayor of London Good Growth Fund. We have commissioned a great architecture practice called RCKa and we will be working closely with their team over the next few months on our strategy for bringing all of the buildings back into use and to ensure we have a bright and sustainable future ahead of us. As part of this work we will be engaging local people, Barnet council and the Brent Cross South regeneration team at Argent Related. This is an incredibly important piece of work and will enable us to articulate a compelling and sustainable future vision for the farm, backed up with research, drawings and a strong business case. 4. THE FARM GARDEN is going from strength to strength and as many of you will have seen, we have expanded beyond the garden gate into the section of the park just outside. This used to be just scrub, grass and a lot of rubbish, but thanks to the help of a wonderful team of volunteers and regular visits from GoodGym we've made great progress and the area is really starting to take shape. You may have noticed that we have even started experimenting growing strawberries, mange tout, tomatoes, corn and potatoes in over 50 hay bales! Do come by and visit us, get involved or just enjoy the space. The garden is open Mondays 10am-11am, Wednesdays 7-8pm (for volunteer induction), Friday 9am-11am and then 3-5pm, and Saturdays 10am-2pm. That's all for now. We will update you on the planning decision as soon as we hear. Hopefully it won't be long now. Do come by and visit our cafe and garden and let us know if you would like to get involved. We're always looking to expand our team. You can email us on info@clitterhouse.com and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram (links below). Thanks, The Farm Team www.clitterhouse.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/clitterhouse Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/chfarm Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clitterhousefarm

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