Our History

CommUNITY Barnet started life in 1979 as Barnet Borough Voluntary Service Council (BBVSC).

BBVSC started off in a small office in Regents Park Road, Finchley with just a handful of staff. What a difference 30 years makes; now the organisation has more than 20 full and part time staff and volunteers and occupies spacious offices in Moxon Street, High Barnet.

A number of our Trustees and staff have been with the organisation for over a decade and they remember what life was like for CommUNITY Barnet then.

How did they get involved in CommUNITY Barnet?

"I always marvel at how a passing comment or chance remark can change a person's outlook or life in some way, and this is exactly what happened with me and BVSC," Says CommUNITY Barnet's Treasurer, Robert Errington. "About 15 years ago I happened to be talking to Antony Jacobson (CommUNITY Barnet's President), when he suggested I might be interested in being involved with CommUNITY Barnet. I remember explaining how my ‘day job' as a Chartered Accountant with my own practice meant that I was already extremely busy but he assured me the commitment would be minimal - just one or two meetings here and there."

CommUNITY Barnet's President Antony Jacobson became involved with Barnet Borough Voluntary Service Council in 1993.

"I had had some contact before then as BBVSC had been connected with what were called ‘hustings' for the election of members to the Barnet Community Health Council, from which I had then recently retired as chair," he says. "Shortly after that I was invited to become a trustee of BBVSC and subsequently was elected chair. In 1998, I was appointed chair of Barnet Health Authority and, very reluctantly, resigned from what had by then become BVSC. When I left the NHS I was invited to become vice president of CommUNITY Barnet and finally president."

There have been many changes at CommUNITY Barnet over the past 30 years the most significant of which being the growing size of the organisation.

"The main changes have been to do with the increase in the size coupled with the ongoing professionalisation of the organisation," says Mr Errington. "CommUNITY Barnet may be a charity, but in order to succeed in this competitive world it's needed to be as effective as any commercial enterprise in all its activities and never more so than in today's economic climate."