From welcoming our first residents to 1,000 people now calling Brent Cross Town home, 2025 has been a milestone year for the Brent Cross regeneration programme.

Our teams have been busier than ever delivering much-needed infrastructure, new homes and community facilities, highways improvements, events and more. Read on to discover how our 2025 shaped up:

Brent Cross Town is home

Early this year, former Whitefield Estate residents officially moved into their new homes at Conductor House, which provided 120 new homes as replacement social housing. The completion of the moves was celebrated with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a community celebration. Other residential homes including The Ashbee, The Delamarre, The Maple and Fusion student accommodation have also been welcoming residents. At the heart of these homes sits Neighbourhood Square which officially opened in October, as well as the first local grocery store, Co-op.

Our community events calendar

The brilliant teams at Brent Cross Town hosted 96 events which brought the community together throughout the year. Some of our favourite events included:

• The much-loved annual Spring and Summer programmes offering free sports, play and craft activities over the school break.
• UK’s first-ever free competitive socialising weekend at Brent Cross Town called ‘The Play-Offs’ which included World Chase Tag championships.
• Brent Cross Town’s first ever repair café, which was held a second time in Autumn due to its popularity.
• Celebrating the 200th anniversary of the modern railway in the UK by burying a special time capsule at Claremont Park.
• Brent Cross Town’s annual Winter lights switch on which was joined by local school children and residents.

Honouring your local legacy

With the local area transforming, we wanted to honour and capture the legacy of Brent Cross Cricklewood through resident stories; some from residents who’ve lived in the area for over fifty years. You can read all the great stories here. We also held our first local legacy session at Brent Cross Town where residents and visitors saw how the area looked and shared their own special memories of living and working in the area. You can watch a recap of the event here. Our ambition is to build on these amazing stories and continue to share the rich history of the area. If you have any suggestions on how you think we can do this, or would like to share your own memories of living in the area, please email us at transformingbx@barnet.gov.uk

Highways and construction works

To build Brent Cross Town and make improvements to the existing area, a whole host of infrastructure works have taken place to increase capacity on our roads and make it easier and safer for pedestrians to get around the area. In some cases, we also needed to take down buildings and structures that are no longer in use. Works included improvement works to upgrade the Claremont Road and Tilling Road junction and the A5 Edgware Road and Geron Way junction. Demolition works of the decommissioned Hendon Waste Transfer station are almost complete, and so will the Whitefield Estate (high-rise) demolition soon. Construction works are underway to build a new modern waste transfer facility on Geron Way / A5 Edgware Road.

These works are an essential part of enabling the wider transformation of the area and teams have carefully designed their programmes to minimise the impact of these works.  We thank you for your continued patience whilst these improvements are made.

Two years of Brent Cross West

We’re proud that our award-winning Brent Cross West station has helped improve connections over the past two years and this is reflected in the recent Thameslink figures showing that the station has exceeded expectations of passenger journeys by an impressive 41% this year, bringing the total number of passenger journeys to 1.2 million since opening.

In November, as home to Thameslink’s newest station, we celebrated the 200th anniversary of the modern railway in the UK by burying a special time capsule at Claremont Park. Watch this space as we develop exciting community artwork projects for the station in 2026.

Creating opportunities for local people

Brent Cross Town’s seventh Community Fund opened, with a focus on supporting education, employment and training projects in Barnet. Local organisations and groups also had the opportunity to apply to be an operator for Brent Cross Town’s first new community space which will open next year.

We’re also committed to providing meaningful work experience and job opportunities to benefit members of the community; and has achieved this through recruitment, facilitating career events and work experience programmes for local schools, as well as staff volunteering on community projects.

Your feedback shaped what we do

This year, your feedback has helped shape design proposals for many aspects of the project, including Clitterhouse Playing Fields entrance via Purbeck Drive, Brent Cross Town’s co-living space and public courtyard, new homes Plots 24A and 24B and Neighbourhood Square North. During our March resident drop-in session, Vattenfall’s team share their plans for the future main energy centre and hosted a Q&A session.

As part of the London Festival of Architecture, residents, community groups and city makers came together for meaningful discussions on how Brent Cross Town can become an intergenerational community in the years ahead. We also held an initial and formal consultation for the implementation of an experimental Controlled Parking Zone across the wider Brent Cross Cricklewood area.

What’s in store for 2026?

We have several exciting milestones coming our way next year, including:

• Announcing Community Fund 2025 grant winners

• New retail and restaurant openings at Brent Cross Town

• The opening of a Brent Cross Town’s first community space

• Launch of Brent Cross Town’s skills and employment service providing opportunities at Brent Cross Town, specifically for those who live in and around the area.

Keep up to date with everything happening across the Brent Cross Cricklewood programme by signing up for our e-newsletter.