Burnt Oak Town Centre engagement

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:

Promote safety & security through targeted improvements
Create a pleasant and clean town centre which attracts and welcomes visitors
Enhance the experience of moving through & dwelling in the town centre
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 10June 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.