Down Lane Park improvement project
- Working together to improve Down Lane Park
- Co-designing Down Lane Park improvements
- Down Lane Park user and community forum
- Engagement summary reports
- News and further reading
Working together to improve Down Lane Park
Approximately 18,000 people live within a 10-minute walk of Down Lane Park. It’s an important community asset for Tottenham Hale.
At the start of 2022, we set out to develop a vision for the future of Down Lane Park, working with a Community Design Group (CDG), made up of volunteers and representatives from the local area. Working together over 15 months and 19 meetings we have developed a single (masterplan) design proposal for the park that we recently consulted in for 2 weeks in May 2023. We will be using feedback from this public engagement to inform the refinement of the proposals and subsequent planning application in the summer.
We have set our ambitions for the park high, to ensure that the designs deliver the improvements that Tottenham Hale’s communities want and deserve. These include new entrances, better pathways, upgraded green spaces, sports and play facilities, and to make the park safer and more inclusive, and deliver a permanent Community Hub building.
These improvements will be delivered in stages. We have £3 million of developer contributions secured to fund design and first package of improvements, plus £750,000 grant funding from the Mayor of London. Recently, the council's Cabinet approved the allocation of a further £4.31 million for investment in the park, which should enable the delivery of the new Community Hub and park improvements in full. Given the extent of improvements, construction delivery will need to be spread over a number of years. You can still view the latest design proposals online:
Co-designing Down Lane Park improvements
We’ve been working with young residents of Tottenham Hale to gather data on how the park is used and perceived by the broader community, particularly younger residents and users.
With support from the Mayor of London's Green & Resilient Spaces Fund, the council partnered with Kaizen Partnership (external link) to train young residents of Tottenham Hale to conduct peer-to-peer engagement in the park. The training involved collecting data from park users, talking to them about their park usage, and gathering suggestions for improvements.
So far, 8 young local residents have been trained by Kaizen Partnership. They have engaged with 265 park users. The insights gathered from this exercise are being used to inform the park's designs and improvements.The findings have revealed that 73% of respondents had not previously shared their views, and the respondents represent a more diverse community compared to earlier public engagement efforts.
Down Lane Park user and community forum
The Forum is led by the community, and will decide its own priorities and focus, which may include:
- identifying and escalating issues relating to day-to-day operation of the park
- supporting management and/or maintenance of park
- organising community/sports events, planting and growing initiatives
- longer term, taking on a stewardship role
- participation in co-design of improvements to the park via its elected co-chairs
Engagement summary reports
- Down Lane Park - Full engagement summary report (PDF, 477KB)
- Down Lane Park - Short engagement summary (PDF, 3.5MB)
News and further reading
- Down Lane Park Improvement news - Commonplace (external link)
- Community-led plans to improve Down Lane Park gets £750,000 funding boost
- Transformation of Tottenham Hale open spaces gets £6 million cash boost