Blackhorse Village

Blackhorse Village was one of a series of residential areas in the borough that received investment as part of the Mini-Holland programme to create great places to live, work, and travel around.

The Blackhorse Village scheme is the area framed by Forest Road, Hoe Street, Selbourne Road and Blackhorse Road. One of the main aims of the scheme was to return the streets to local people by preventing non-local traffic from cutting through the area while making the streets safer, quieter and more enjoyable.

The Blackhorse Village scheme was introduced to: 

• Reduce the amount of non-local traffic using the area 
• Improve the look, feel and safety of the streets for all road users 
• Improve routes to and from local schools and other places of interest in the area 
• Encourage people to use healthy modes of transport.

The improvements included:

• Modal filters also known as road closures, to restrict non-local traffic
• Planting and greening
• Traffic calming measures
• Improved routes for pedestrians and cyclists
• Places to sit and spend time
• Continuous footways also known as blended Copenhagen style crossings, at junctions to prioritise pedestrians and slow traffic.

We ran a perception survey between 13 March to 3 April 2015 to find out what people thought of the local area and the types of improvements they wanted to see. The survey was made available online and more than 5,000 surveys were hand delivered to all households in the area. In total, 534 people responded with their valuable insights. The perception survey results can be viewed in the useful documents section below.

The feedback from this survey was used to inform designs of the Blackhorse Village scheme. These designs were taken to a series of co-design workshops in May, where residents were given the opportunity to respond and provide us with their initial ideas and comments. These ideas were incorporated into the designs. 

A public consultation on the designs was open from 30 June to 21 July 2015. People could complete a survey or speak to us at drop-in sessions held on 7 July and 11 July. You can view the consultation leaflet that was delivered to all properties in the area, in the useful documents section below.

Based on the feedback received, several changes were made the to the proposals so that they better aligned with the community’s needs. 

Therefore, we decided to:

• Retain northbound one-way traffic flow on Wolsey Avenue
• Remove plans to create a bus gate on Mission Grove
• Made Pearl Road one-way southbound 

Made traffic flow on Pretoria Avenue two-way between Longfield Avenue and Forest Road. 

In September 2015 the Blackhorse Village Scheme was approved by Waltham Forest Council for construction. You can view the full Portfolio Lead Meeting report (PLM) in the useful documents list below.

We wrote to residents in September 2015 with the results from the consultation and information on the construction stages of the scheme. You can view this update leaflet in the useful documents section below.

Construction of the scheme took place between September 2015 and March 2016.