Improving Turnpike Lane
- The ROJ Café Kiosk
- Turnpike Lane’s future
- Why Turnpike Lane?
- Working together to improve Turnpike Lane
- Shopfront improvements
- Shutter Gallery
- Turnpike Lane newsletter
- Shopping survey
- Tackling issues
The ROJ Café Kiosk
The community want a cleaner, greener and safer Turnpike Lane. One of the plans underway to help make the area more attractive is to reconfigure the Roj Café kiosk. Working in partnership with the café owners, Haringey are creating a new café.
New design
The new Roj Cafe will enable visitors and residents to enjoy the northern part of Ducketts Common in all seasons and weathers.
It will have large windows which will open to the south, east and west of the common. By improving visibility, it is anticipated that the large windows will lead to a reduction in crime and anti-social behaviour.
A series of spaced, slender timber columns will sit lightly among the trees that border the park. At the northeast corner, a softly illuminated sign will feature the name (Roj means ‘sun’ in Kurdish).
Customers will be able to order food and refreshments through an external service hatch, or sit and linger over a coffee inside or on a permeable gravel patio bordered by a rain garden planted with ornamental grasses. A new accessible toilet will help all visitors to spend time in the park.
Construction
Cosmur Construction Ltd will be undertaking construction of the new café from mid-December to March 2022.
During the construction, this area of Ducketts Common will be closed to pedestrians and notices will be placed at park entrances advising of the works. Please email parkprojects@haringey.gov.uk if you have any enquiries about this project and we apologise for any inconvenience caused by the construction works.
Timeline
Works started in October 2021 and are anticipated to be completed in the early Spring of 2022.
Construction updates
June 2022
Works are progressing well. The old kiosk has now been removed, soft landscaping has begun, and the park is now being reinstated. A re-opening date will be announced soon.
We hope you are excited by the prospect of a new café with accessible public conveniences opening on Ducketts Common this summer!
April 2022
The new roof to the café is now complete and the windows and doors are now all installed. Over the next week the outside of the café will be completed and painted.
February 2022
Works are progressing well and the new foundations for the café have been installed. The cafe's walls have started to be constructed and over the coming weeks you will see the new space take shape.
We do apologise for any inconvenience caused by closing this section of the common.
November 2021
The sewer connection works for the new accessible toilet are due to be completed shortly. The fencing protecting the site will be removed to enable the park to be open until the contractors starting to build the new café can commence. This is anticipated to occur in December, with full construction of the new café starting in early January 2022.
January 2021
Works to construct the new Roj café are due to start next week. Cosmur Ltd are Haringey’s appointed contractors for the project and they will begin placing fencing and installing containers for their site welfare. During this time there will be some disruption to the immediate area of the park and it can no longer be accessed until the café is built. Further updates to follow as the project progresses through construction.
More information
You can see the granted planning proposal on the Planning portal, using the following reference number: HGY/2020/0271.
Turnpike Lane’s future
High Streets are the heart and soul of our community and as a council, we want to ensure that our High Streets remain a vibrant and bustling part of community life and can make a robust recovery post-COVID-19.
Turnpike Lane bustles with activity. It has great independent shops with loyal customers and is an important transport hub - but it could be better.
We have been talking with local residents, organisations, and shop owners to hear their views on the future of Turnpike Lane. The communities’ opinions are feeding into a collaborative improvement plan, which will support the area’s long-term development.
Why Turnpike Lane?
Turnpike Lane is a unique and integral part of Wood Green. It has traditional Victorian terraced street properties with more than 100 shops along its length. It also connects the east and west parts of the borough.
In earlier consultations, engagement events and surveys on the future of Wood Green, the community were very clear that they would like to see Turnpike Lane improved.
A study of Economy and Employment Space in Wood Green identified Turnpike Lane as an area of untapped opportunity. With investment, it has huge potential to be a busy and thriving street meeting local shopping needs and business needs.
Working together to improve Turnpike Lane
As a council we would like to:
- Deliver community-led regeneration - we want you, the residents, traders and local stakeholders to participate and become partners in the development and future of Turnpike Lane
Contribute to a safer environment - Turnpike Lane will be a place where people will have ownership, feeling secure and proud to live and do business- Enhance public spaces - create a cleaner, greener and safer experience for all users of Turnpike Lane
- Secure a legacy of good design - enhance the unique identity of Turnpike Lane and reflect the vibrant and diverse community that live, work, shop and play there
- Improve safety - design out anti-social behaviour
- Promote local economy - support existing local businesses to grow, attract new businesses to the area and work closely with the Turnpike Lane Traders Association
We are committed to ensuring that all residents, traders, and key members of organisations are part of Turnpike Lane’s future development. Many people have already had their say through council-run engagement activities and by the engagement events and co-design sessions undertaken by our design consultants ‘We Made That.’
Shopfront Improvements
The last few years have been an incredibly difficult time for shop owners across the country, but we’re excited to see that our local High Streets are recovering with each passing day. We want to work with Turnpike Lane businesses to create a shopping area that encourages people to visit more often, stay longer and return to Turnpike Lane again and again. 
To ensure that we achieve great visual impact on Turnpike Lane, we want to help make the street more welcoming for residents, commuters and shoppers through a shopfront improvement project. There are two parts to this project – large scale shopfront improvements and smaller-scale shopfront improvements.
This project is supported by the Turnpike Lane Traders Association.
Read the full details of this project on the dedicated Turnpike Lane shopfront improvements webpage.
Shutter Gallery
We want to transform the facades of Turnpike Lane and Station Road shops by creating a ‘Shutter Gallery’.
Thank you to all the local artists who responded to our open call.
Visit our Turnpike Lane and Station Road Shutter Gallery page for all the latest project updates.
*The photo above is of a painted shutter in Tottenham, created as part of the Tottenham Shutter Gallery Project.
Turnpike Lane newsletter
We've launched a regular newsletter to keep you informed of the initiatives Haringey Council and partners are working on to improve Turnpike Lane.
Working together with the local community on Turnpike Lane, we are delivering a number of improvements that will address the visual appearance of the street, support traders as they recover from the impacts of Covid-19, and tackle the causes of crime to make Turnpike Lane a safer and more pleasant neighbourhood.
- Read the March 2022 edition here (PDF, 487KB)
- Read the January 2022 edition here (PDF, 423KB)
- Read the December 2021 edition here (PDF, 401KB)
Shopping Survey
We carried out a shopping survey in 2019 to find out who shops on Turnpike Lane and what their aspirations for the area were.
The survey data showed that the majority of customers who use Turnpike Lane live within the surrounding areas; Green Lanes, the Ladder and Wightman Road and Wood Green. They also told us they wanted to see:
- Improvements to how and where you can park to better support local traders
- Investment and celebration in the area’s culture and heritage
- Support places and activities for young people
- The road environment improved and the layout to be greener and nicer for people to walk and shop
COVID-19 has changed how customers' shop, work and play. We will be reviewing the shopping survey findings to make sure our proposals are responding to today’s challenges and what the area will need in the longer-term.
Tackling issues
A number of issues have been raised by residents, traders, shoppers and visitors (in 2019) and in response we are:
- Antisocial Behaviour and Crime
- Partnership working with the Metropolitan Police to identify the offenders involved in drugs activity at Ducketts Common and elsewhere locally
- The Police and council have increased resources to tackle anti-social behaviour in the area and share intelligence
- Haringey Council Officers are exploring possible sources of funding to install a CCTV camera to cover Harringay Passage
- Dirtiness / Street Cleaning
- Litter
Turnpike Lane is swept throughout the day from 7am. Feedback on the quality of the sweep is good- The council has purchased a new deep wash kit and will be carrying out extra cleaning of the pavements
- Graffiti
- The council will remove graffiti, and within 24 hours if offensive or racist. There may be delays if the graffiti is on private property
- Fly Tipping
- Fly-tipping in this area is typically black bags presented on the pavement at the wrong time of day
- The area has two collections each day, one in the morning and one in the evening
- Businesses have separate commercial contracts for disposal of waste and where this is via a sack collection it should also keep to the advertised time bands
- The council will check that businesses have arrangements in place for the collection of waste
- Council officers try to prevent fly-tipping by offering advice and guidance, designing out opportunities where possible and enforcing where they are able
- Litter
- Condition of the roads and pavements
- The council has resurfaced
- The paving is planned to be inspected and any damaged slabs replaced
- The extent of further refurbishment and investment will be scoped during the development of the Improvement Plan in 2021/22
- Parking restrictions
- Haringey Council has agreed to reconfigure parking spaces on the side roads to create 54 extra pay by phone parking spaces
- Six underused loading bays have been converted to 18 pay by phone parking spaces
- Marketing banners
- New brackets on lampposts have been installed to enable lamppost banner publicity for events or marketing activities
- Festive Lights
- Haringey Council installed power supply and sockets to support the installation of Festive lights in 2019