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Burnt Oak Town Centre engagement

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This engagement has now closed.

Have your say on our initial proposals to improve the public space in Burnt Oak Town Centre.
The project builds on the community’s involvement in shaping the Burnt Oak Town Centre Strategy, we want to continue to support the people who know the town centre best to take a leading role in shaping its future.

We have commissioned a team of specialist consultants Erect Architecture to support our engagement with the Burnt Oak community and ensure you have the opportunity to be actively involved in the co-design of your town centre.

In the first stage of the engagement we

Have your say on our initial proposals to improve the public space in Burnt Oak Town Centre.
The project builds on the community’s involvement in shaping the Burnt Oak Town Centre Strategy, we want to continue to support the people who know the town centre best to take a leading role in shaping its future.

We have commissioned a team of specialist consultants Erect Architecture to support our engagement with the Burnt Oak community and ensure you have the opportunity to be actively involved in the co-design of your town centre.

In the first stage of the engagement we asked for your views on how you use amenities in the town centre and how we could improve it. Following the questionnaire feedback, we have been working with various groups as ‘local experts’ to develop and realise your ideas to improve the public space.

The aim is to understand how well the proposed improvements addresses community priorities which will help to inform our design decisions moving forwards.


Your views are important to us

We want to hear everyone's feedback, in particular we would like to hear from local people who live, work, shop, study or have businesses in the area.

Please take the time to read our community engagement document which outlines the principles we have developed so far that are based on what you have told us as part of the first round of engagement.


How to get involved and next steps

You can do this by:

Our engagement plan is now underway through a combination of on-street pop-up engagement events and co-design workshops. Please email burntoak@erectarchitecture.co.uk for details of the next event.

If you would like to be more involved with helping us plan this exciting project, you can join the Burnt Oak Partnership Board (Community Group) to keep up to date with projects in the town centre. We meet on the third Monday of every month online and in person. Please contact towncentres@barnet.gov.uk for more info or to talk about the project.


What happens after the consultation ends?

Erect Architecture will use the responses to inform the design proposals moving forwards. We will publish the findings here and we will also let you know how we are acting on the results of the consultation under ‘We asked, You said, We Did.’

This engagement has now closed.

  • We asked, you said, we did

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    We asked

    We asked for your views on the emerging designs for Burnt Oak Town Centre public realm which has been developed according to four community design principles:

    1. Promote safety & security through targeted improvements
    2. Create a pleasant and clean town centre which attracts and welcomes visitors
    3. Enhance the experience of moving through & dwelling in the town centre
    4. Connect into and enhance green and blue network (Silk Stream & neighbouring parks)

    We presented design ideas aimed at delivering each of these themes and asked for your feedback and suggestions to improve the proposals further.


    You said

    We received a total of 247 responses including hardcopy and online to the questionnaire including 36% local residents, 33% local businesses and 23% often visited Burnt Oak or lived and worked in Barnet. Most respondents strongly supported or tended to support the proposals.

    Through the consultation period, we engaged with:

    • 45 people via a high street public pop-up event on 10 June 2023
    • 66 businesses via 1:1 drop ins and interviews
    • 32 people at In person workshops targeting protected groups with UNITAS Youth Group, Harrow Elder’s Group, Romanian Culture and Charity Together.


    Key themes people would like to see addressed further includes:

    • Safety is a key objective for most respondents and many people expressed the need to support any physical interventions with a strategy for ongoing management and enforcement to protect safety.
    • The shopfronts along Watling Avenue have a big impact on the character of the town centre and the experience of shoppers and high street users. Many respondents wished to see the relationship between the shopfronts and the pedestrian space addressed to improve accessibility for all.
    • Parking within the town centre was raised by a number of respondents, some were concerned about the impact of losing parking and others wanted to see greater enforcement against illegal parking and vehicle dominance along Watling Avenue to be addressed.
    • Adding trees and planting to the town centre was welcomed by many respondents but with the note that safety, cleanliness and accessibility are the transformation priorities, and these aims should not be compromised by the addition of new greenery.


    We did

    The design team are developing the lighting and CCTV proposals for the town centre to respond to the feedback regarding safety. Working closely with Barnet Community Safety and Metropolitan Police Safer Neighbourhoods teams, we are refining the designs to target hotspots identified by respondents including Back Lane and Market Lane, Burnt Oak Underground Station entrance and the southern entrance to Watling Park.

    To address the feedback raised regarding parking within the town centre we commissioned a travel survey to better understand how people travel to and from Burnt Oak.

    This survey asked 480 people how they travelled to Burnt Oak and found that on that day 50% walked, 25% took a bus, 14% travelled by Tube, 9% used a car, 1% took a train and 1% cycled. A majority of 91% used public transport or active travel to go to Burnt Oak.

    Using this data, we will develop a ‘Kerbside Strategy’ for Burnt Oak Town Centre which balances provision for different modes of movement (walking, cycling, public transport, loading, car travel, etc). This will help to make sure the interventions best reflect current and future needs for users.

    We will use your feedback to develop the Public Realm Design Framework and more detailed design stages. There will be further co-design activities taking place, if you would like to be involved or join the Burnt Oak Partnership Board to help monitor the project, please email towncentres@barnet.gov.uk.