Highams Park Town Centre

As part of the Mini-Holland Programme we introduced four town centre schemes. This included one in Highams Park Town Centre, to make it easier for people to walk and cycle for local journeys, to improve connections between our borough’s town centres, and improve the overall look and feel of these areas.

The Highams Park Town Centre scheme refers to the area framed by North Circular Road, Beech Hall Road, Hatch Lane and Woodford New Road. 

The improvements included:

• Continuous blended ‘Copenhagen’ style crossings at junctions and side roads
• Traffic calming features such as raised tables
• New walking and cycling routes
• Cycle parking 
• Combined cycle and pedestrian crossings 
• New public spaces with plants, trees and seating
• New street lighting, better signage, and more wayfinding.

Between 14 March and 1 April 2016, we conducted a perception survey to find out what people thought about the area and the type of improvements they would like to see. The survey was made available online and a hard copy version was hand delivered to all households in the area.

This feedback helped create an early design which was presented to over 90 residents who attended our co-design workshops in May 2016. Attendees at the workshop were asked what they liked and disliked about the design and what else they would like to see.

A public consultation on the design was held in June and July 2016, where over 6,000 consultation documents and questionnaires were delivered to the community by Royal Mail. To promote the consultation, street notices were put up across the area and drop-in sessions were held on Thursday 7 July 2016 and Tuesday 12 July 2016 at local venues. Officers also carried out various technical surveys, consulted with emergency services, utility companies, businesses, ward councillors and schools.

Overall, 384 people took part in the public consultation and provided a total of 959 comments. The results of the consultation showed that overall 20% of respondents were positive towards the scheme, 43% were neutral and 37% were negative about the proposals. You can view more results from the public consultation by reading the PLM report in the useful documents section below.

Following the public consultation stage, some elements of the scheme were approved for construction which took place between October 2016 and April 2017.

• Highams Park Town Centre: Perception survey leaflet, March 2016 (PDF)
• Highams Park Town Centre: Public consultation leaflet, June 2016 (PDF)
• Highams Park Town Centre: Portfolio Lead Meeting Report (PLM), October 2016 (PDF)
• Highams Park Town Centre: Construction update letter, December 2016 (PDF)