Bunhill, Barbican and Golden Lane Healthy Neighbourhood

Islington Council and the City of London Corporation are working in partnership on the long-term future of the Bunhill, Barbican and Golden Lane area. We are proposing to create a cross-boundary healthy neighbourhood in Bunhill, south of Old Street, as part of our efforts to create a cleaner, greener, and healthier borough.

This healthy neighbourhood plan aims to create pleasant and lively streets where communities can come together to spend time with their neighbours, support local shops, and children can play and travel safely. With more plants and trees, seating for neighbours and reduced traffic, the healthy neighbourhood will transform Bunhill’s streets.

After listening to local people’s feedback, we are prioritising:

• creating safe streets for children to travel to school and areas for play
• reducing through-traffic, improving road safety and air quality
• supporting local businesses to thrive.

The liveable neighbourhood will also work to:

• create greener and more pleasant streets
• make it easier and safer to walk and cycle
• bring the community together.

We will be engaging with the community to get your input into the design phase, and we will hold further engagement and a formal public consultation before we implement any scheme.

Beech Street Zero Emission Scheme

At the same time as our early engagement, the City of London Corporation will be undertaking a formal consultation on updated proposals for Beech Street.

Between March 2020 and September 2021, the City of London Corporation ran a traffic experiment on Beech Street to improve air quality. The experiment restricted polluting traffic from using Beech Street as a “through-route” while still allowing access for zero emission-capable vehicles and for any vehicle that was accessing a property on Beech Street. Since the experiment ended, most of the traffic has returned to Beech Street and nitrogen dioxide levels have risen.

They are now consulting on making similar measures permanent to improve air quality.

The Beech Street consultation will close on 6 March 2023. View the proposals and take part in the consultation.

Planning the healthy neighbourhood

See a map of the proposed neighbourhood area.

We want to work with local people to understand the issues you would like to see addressed in the Bunhill area to create healthier and more pleasant streets, working together to design and implement the cross-boundary healthy neighbourhood.

To do this, we will be holding several different types of engagement activities to hear from the whole community as we develop designs. Details of events and opportunities to get involved will be advertised on this page. We will also publicise them locally.

Drop-in sessions

We will be holding initial early engagement drop-in sessions on these dates.

More engagement events are planned to give people opportunities to help shape the proposed cross-boundary healthy neighbourhood.

Later in 2023 we will present draft proposals for the healthy neighbourhood for comments. These proposals will take into account the feedback and ideas we have received from the engagement events and from the City of London's consultation.

City of London early consultation

The City of London are offering local residents the chance to comment on a map of the area, what works and what doesn't, to help with plans for the healthy neighbourhood plan. Read more about how to comment. 

Timeline

For any questions

For general information and questions about liveable neighbourhoods in Islington, visit our people-friendly streets FAQs page.

If you have any questions that are not answered by the information on this page or our main FAQs page, contact us at PublicRealm@islington.gov.uk.