Barnet Council has applied to the High Court for an injunction to shut down Heathside Preparatory School, which charges between £9,000 and £18,000 a year and intends expanding to a new Hampstead site. The school is currently scattered across six buildings, including a church and a synagogue, and its attempt to take over a seventh premises has prompted furious backlash from locals. Parents and ex-staff are pursuing legal claims over a string of management failures, including 15 pupils having to leave because Heathside was offering GCSEs without DofE permission. There are allegations that a staff member took Year 9 students off school premises and returned drunk, and in 2018 the head-teacher tried to block the publication of a damning Ofsted report flagging multiple safeguarding issues. Since the start of this academic year, pupils and teachers have been leaving ‘in droves’.