The Truth About the Edgware Redevelopment Plan – A Voter Briefing

What is happening in Edgware

Edgware Town Centre is the subject of one of the densest residential schemes in the UK, with a residential density approximately 23 times greater than the surrounding Edgware context. The scheme, submitted by Ballymore (Edgware) Ltd, a joint venture between the Ballymore Group and Places for London, the property arm of Transport for London, proposes the demolition of Broadwalk Shopping Centre, Edgware Bus Station, and the existing bus garage, and their replacement with up to 3,828 units in 25 buildings of up to 29 storeys. The application (ref: 24/2686/OUT) was approved by Barnet Council's Strategic Planning Committee on 23 July 2025. The Mayor of London declined to intervene and confirmed the GLA's Stage 2 decision on 30 March 2026.

Site 28 allocation: the Edgware Underground station, bus station, bus garage and Deans Brook Nature Reserve, designated in the Barnet Local Plan for 2,316 homes.

For more information about the application, visit saveouredgware.co.uk.

How this came about: the Local Plan

The groundwork for the Edgware scheme was laid under the Conservative-led Barnet Council, which began the Local Plan process and allocated Site 28 for high-density residential development. The Edgware Supplementary Planning Document was pushed through in 2020-21 under Conservative leadership, during the Covid pandemic, when public engagement was severely limited. Residents within 100 metres of the site were not notified, and the consultation attracted only 27 objections, not because of lack of concern, but because of minimal publicity.

Labour won control of Barnet Council in 2022 on a manifesto that explicitly promised to "stand up to developers", deliver "more affordable family homes, not tower-block blight", and introduce tougher height and density policies. Once in power, Labour did the opposite. Rather than reversing or moderating the Conservative-era allocations, Labour removed the existing tall building constraints, making it easier to designate Edgware for up to 4,700 units at the highest density across two sites: Site 27 (the Broadwalk Shopping Centre and associated surface car park, allocated for approximately 2,384 units) and Site 28 (the live TfL operational transport infrastructure, allocated for approximately 2,316 units).

Labour made tall buildings in Barnet far easier to approve

The Conservative-drafted Local Plan defined buildings of 15 storeys or more as "Very Tall Buildings" and required that they "will not be permitted unless exceptional circumstances can be demonstrated." The policy also required specific assessment of a building's contribution to the character of the area, its impact on heritage assets in neighbouring boroughs, its impact on green spaces and wildlife, and compliance with Historic England guidance. The design of tall buildings had to "not detract from the nature of surrounding places and the quality of life for those living and working around them."

When Labour took control of Barnet in 2022 — having promised in their manifesto to fight "tower-block blight" and apply "tougher height and density policies" — they did the opposite. Through the Main Modifications consultation (MM46, Chapter 6, Policy CDH04 — Tall Buildings, May 2024), the Labour-led council proposed and adopted changes that: deleted the "Very Tall Buildings" category and the exceptional circumstances test entirely; removed the requirement to assess impact on local character, neighbouring borough heritage, and wildlife; dropped the Historic England guidance requirement; and replaced the protection of "quality of life for those living and working around" tall buildings with language about making "optimal use of the capacity of sites." Barnet's own Overview and Scrutiny Committee formally noted the removal of the definition of very tall buildings in the modifications. As for Site 27 (Edgware Broadwalk Centre), at paragraph 108 of EXAM 75 (LBB Note on Site Allocations, pages 22–23), the council also reflected on MM356 for Site 27 and acknowledged the merits in removing the phrase "with height of neighbouring buildings being of foremost consideration" from the Site 27 design guidelines — deleting the one explicit instruction that told developers to treat the height of the surrounding two-storey 1930s houses as the primary benchmark for any new tall building on the site.

The result is that the tallest tower in the Ballymore scheme — 29 storeys, rising approximately 103 metres above ground — faces no height cap, no exceptional circumstances test, and no requirement to prove it respects the character of a suburban 1930s neighbourhood. This is the planning framework that Labour adopted, and that Ballymore's scheme was approved against.

2,316 homes planned on critical TfL transport hub and Deans Brook Nature Reserve

The most controversial part of the Edgware policy is Site 28, which proposes 2,316 units over 8.17 hectares of active transport infrastructure, including the Underground station, bus station, and bus garage.

The eastern part of the Site 28 includes the Deans Brook and Stoneyfields Park nature reserve, a protected wildlife site (Borough Grade II SINC) currently closed to the public. Ballymore's own ecological survey acknowledges the reserve supports bats, slow-worms, hedgehogs, kingfishers and priority woodland habitat. Despite this, Barnet included the reserve inside the Site 28 boundary and counted its 2.54 hectares in the housing capacity calculation, generating an extra 720 units in the target figure. The Local Plan itself says proposals "should preserve" the reserve, yet it was still used to inflate the numbers.

The approved scheme cuts a cycle and walking path through the reserve, removes 34% of the woodland, and opens the area to general public access for the first time. Ballymore's own consultants rated this as a "Moderate Adverse (Significant)" impact at borough level, permanent and direct. The London Wildlife Trust, the Environment Agency, and Barnet's own Trees team all objected.

The Environment Agency formally objected on flood risk grounds in August 2024, warning that the path and bridge come within 8 metres of the Deans Brook riverbank and could cause bank destabilisation and flooding. Barnet added three planning conditions (43–45) requiring detailed designs to be agreed with the EA before any work starts near the brook, with lighting in the buffer zone capped at 2 lux and channel modifications prohibited. However, the EA's letter also warned that approving the scheme contrary to its objection without first referring it to the Secretary of State would make the decision unlawful. The EA never withdrew its objection in writing.

Thousands of residents objected but the Local Plan went ahead anyway. By 2023, residents had become fully aware of the scale of what was being planned. A petition calling on Barnet Council to scrap the Edgware Growth Area policy that would allow up to 4,700 units to be crammed into a small area of Edgware town centre gathered over 6,000 signatures: Save Edgware Now. In addition, over 500 residents wrote directly to the Barnet Overview and Scrutiny Committee demanding the removal of Site 28, and over 300 written objections were submitted to the planning inspectors.

Despite all of this, the Local Plan was formally adopted by the Labour-led Barnet Cabinet in February 2025, with Site 28 intact. Deputy Leader Ross Houston (Labour) dismissed the objections, saying only "some" Edgware residents opposed the plans.

Edgware misclassified a "Major Town Centre" to justify building far beyond what fits the area

The entire rationale for this extreme level of development rests on a disputed and contested designation. Edgware is Barnet's only Major Town Centre, a classification that residents and experts argue was wrongly assigned. The designation relies on comparison goods retail data, yet Edgware's retail mix is overwhelmingly convenience-led: its total retail floorspace of 40,472 sqm falls well below the 50,000 sqm threshold for Major Town Centre status, and its ratio of comparison to convenience goods is approximately 10% to 60%, the inverse of what a Major Town Centre requires. Edgware lacks the significant leisure, employment, and civic functions that define a Major Town Centre under the London Plan. Residents and the Edgware Community Association have consistently argued that Edgware should be classified as a District Centre, a designation that would not support the extreme density being imposed on it. The entire planning rationale for 4,700 units depends on this disputed classification remaining in place.

For more on the Local Plan allocation see saveouredgware.co.uk/objections.

The planning application was approved despite 7,000 public objections

Record-breaking public opposition ignored as the scheme moves forward.

Ballymore submitted its outline planning application in July 2024. During the statutory consultation period Barnet's planning portal malfunctioned, yet the application still received over 7,000 objections, the highest number ever recorded for a Barnet planning application. The previous record was 2,500. A petition calling for safeguards to protect the bus station attracted over 3,000 signatures. More than 1,400 objections were submitted directly via the GLA planning portal. Hundreds of residents wrote personally to Anne Clarke, the GLA Labour Assembly Member for Barnet and Camden. Every appeal was dismissed or ignored.

The petition: Stop Edgware's bus station and bus garage from being demolished

On 23 July 2025, Barnet's Strategic Planning Committee voted to approve the scheme. All six Labour councillors voted in favour. All three Conservative councillors voted against. Councillors from the Conservative and Reform parties also spoke against the plan. A Conservative motion to defer the decision to allow unresolved fire safety and legal concerns to be addressed was rejected by the Labour chair.

Demolition and downgrading of the Bus Station

Edgware Bus Station has served the community for decades. It provides a fully enclosed, staffed, sheltered environment with 68 seats and step-free access to the Underground entrance approximately five metres away. It handles approximately 23,000 bus passenger movements per day across around 20 bus routes, making it one of outer London's most important transport interchanges.

The approved scheme does not replace the bus station with a new bus station. Instead it proposes a series of dispersed on-street bus stops along Station Road and Approach Road. Based on the developer's own Transport Assessment data:

• Bus-to-Tube walking distances increase up to 25-fold, from around five metres to approximately 132 metres
• 35.7% of interchange routes would require passengers to cross the busy A5109 Station Road, compared with 0% today
• Overall interchange walking distance increases by 145%
• Walking times for passengers with limited mobility increase by 165%

Edgware is one of the few step-free Underground stations in the area, making the interchange particularly critical for disabled passengers and those with reduced mobility.

The existing 18 surface bus stands, which currently allow buses to wait, turn, and load in an organised, safe, off-street environment, would be permanently relocated underground into the proposed electric bus garage, housing at least 190 electric buses beneath nine residential tower blocks as tall as 29 storeys. This is not a like-for-like replacement. It is a fundamental change in how bus operations in Edgware would function, entirely dependent on an underground structure that the London Fire Brigade has said may never be proven safe.

Bus depot removal phasing: the existing bus station and garage can be demolished before the underground replacement has been demonstrated to be safely buildable and operable.

Failure to assess impact on disabled and vulnerable residents

Barnet Council has a statutory, non-delegable duty under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED). This requires the council to assess and have "due regard" to the equality impacts of its decisions before and at the time the decision is taken. It cannot be deferred.

The GLA's own Stage 1 report identified that "the interchange experience for some passengers could be longer walk distances" and required "an assessment of impact on their journeys, and confirmation of how this change is mitigated through design." Despite this, Barnet approved the scheme without a station-specific equality impact assessment. The applicant's modelling used generic London-wide assumptions with no station-level demographic data. Passenger facilities and accessible design details were explicitly deferred to Reserved Matters. The proposed bus stop layby width of approximately 2.5 metres falls below the BS 8300-1:2018 minimum of 3.6 metres for accessible boarding.

Critically, Barnet's own committee report accepted that "the proposals do not at this stage define the nature of the passenger facilities to be provided in the public transport interchange." Replacing a direct, step-free, 68-seat sheltered interchange with dispersed on-street stops separated from the Tube entrance by multiple road crossings disproportionately harms disabled, elderly, and mobility-impaired passengers.

Unresolved fire safety risks of underground electric bus garage

The proposed underground electric bus garage would house approximately 190 buses powered by lithium-ion batteries directly beneath nine residential tower blocks of up to 29 storeys. This type of structure has never been built in the United Kingdom and no Building Regulations framework currently exists to govern its safe construction.

Nine residential tower blocks are structurally dependent on the underground electric bus garage directly beneath them.

The London Fire Brigade formally raised serious concerns about the project from as early as 2022. In November 2022, the LFB assessed the proposal and concluded it was "not viable as laid out in the proposals supplied" and that "the London Fire Brigade is not satisfied with the proposals." This assessment was obtained by Save Our Edgware via a Freedom of Information request. The LFB's position was confirmed unchanged in December 2023 and again in August 2024.

In its formal objection letter of 1 October 2024 — the full text of which is available here — the LFB went further, warning that the underground electric bus garage poses substantial fire safety risks, including structural collapse and the potential for toxic vapour cloud explosions. The LFB's most critical finding concerned the dependency between the garage and the towers above it:

The LFB also warned that the garage had been approached "in the same way as a conventional car park", failing to account for the specific hazards of electric vehicles in an enclosed underground environment. In its representations to the GLA at Stage 2, the LFB confirmed it remains unclear whether fire testing will ever demonstrate the scheme to be viable. The LFB's objection was never withdrawn.

Planning permission has nonetheless been granted. The permission does not prevent demolition of the existing bus station and garage before the underground replacement has been demonstrated to be safely buildable and operable.

Widespread warnings from media and fire safety experts

The fire safety issues have been widely reported:

Planning conditions that fail to guarantee safety before demolition

Barnet approved the scheme with a planning condition (Condition 17) requiring that a fire safety strategy for the underground garage be approved by the London Fire Brigade before any buses enter the garage. This may sound reassuring. It is not. Condition 17 is a pre-use control only, meaning it does not prevent any of the following from happening first:

• Demolition of the existing bus station and garage, authorised from Year 1 of the development
• Excavation and construction of the underground garage shell, authorised from Year 1
• Construction of the residential towers above the garage, authorised before fire safety is resolved
• Occupation of up to 999 units in those towers, permitted before LFB approval is obtained

In other words, families could be living in the towers directly above an underground garage before anyone knows whether that garage can ever be made safe. The existing bus station and garage, which serve 23,000 passengers a day, could be permanently demolished long before the replacement is confirmed deliverable. If the LFB ultimately concludes the underground garage can never be safely approved, there is no fallback plan.

The Section 106 agreement contains no requirement to revert to a surface-level bus facility, no deadline by which the fire safety question must be resolved, and no mechanism to return to committee if the underground garage proves impossible to build. Barnet was made aware of this gap in writing on 30 January 2026, while the Section 106 was still being drafted. Save Our Edgware provided the precise wording of the clause needed to prevent demolition before fire safety approval was secured. Barnet declined to include it.

The permission allows demolition and construction steps to proceed before the underground replacement has been proven safe and operable.

Use of £41.5 million in public CIL funds to support an otherwise unviable scheme

Barnet Council's own Cabinet report of 17 June 2025 states unequivocally that the scheme is "currently not considered by the viability specialists to be deliverable alongside the full range of planning policy and CIL requirements" and that "without the application of £41.5 million to fund provision of infrastructure... the scheme would not be deliverable."

In other words, Barnet is proposing to divert £41.5 million of Community Infrastructure Levy funds, money collected from developers to pay for community infrastructure such as schools, parks, and roads, directly to Ballymore to make a scheme viable that would otherwise fail on its own economics. CIL is a statutory levy intended for community-wide infrastructure benefit, not to plug viability gaps in a single private development.

No assessment appears to have been conducted under the Subsidy Control Act 2022, which requires public authorities to assess whether arrangements of this kind constitute a public subsidy requiring referral to the Competition and Markets Authority.

What happens next: legal challenge and future decisions

The formal decision notice from Barnet is expected shortly following the GLA Stage 2 decision of 30 March 2026. Once issued, that will trigger the window during which a legal challenge can be brought in the Planning Court. Save Our Edgware is taking legal advice on a judicial review of Barnet's decision, with grounds identified across fire safety, the Public Sector Equality Duty, transport policy compliance, and procedural fairness at committee stage.

Support the legal challenge: saveouredgware.co.uk/fight

For all campaign information: saveouredgware.co.uk