Lloyd Park and Higham Hill area improvements

The London Borough of Waltham Forest is committed to creating people-friendly streets and neighbourhoods that actively encourage walking, cycling, and using public transport. Walking and cycling for local trips can achieve significant benefits for the health of individuals and the environment and are a means to help tackle the public health, air quality, and climate crises within the borough.

To meet these aims, and in response to feedback raised by the community in a perception survey in 2019, we designed proposals for the Lloyd Park and Higham Hill areas. This area is bounded by Forest Road (A503) to the south, Blackhorse Lane (B179) to the west, Billet Road (B179) to the north, and Chingford Road (A112) to the east, and is home to about 5,000 residents.

The improvements, which can be viewed in full in the ‘Useful documents’ section below, include interventions to make walking and cycling easier like modal filters, traffic calming measures like sinusoidal humps, rain gardens and changes to the footway. 

In November 2022, over 5,000 leaflets were delivered to addresses within the scheme boundary asking the local community for input and feedback on the latest plans for the area. 

The public consultation formally ran between 30 November 2022 and 23 December 2022, but the Council continued to receive feedback and engage with stakeholders during the first three months of 2023. The consultation was primarily hosted online via the digital engagement platform Commonplace, and hard copies were available upon request. We advertised the consultation online and via on-street posters and hosted two drop-in events where they were able to view the plans, discuss the scheme with council officers and provide feedback on the proposals. As part of the consultation process, we contacted key stakeholders, including the emergency services, medical emergency services, utility companies, businesses, religious institutions, councillors and schools to make them aware of the consultation and gather feedback on the proposals, which have been worked into the final design. 

We used the information gathered during this process to refine the designs. Changes included removing some modal filters from Series 1 and replacing the Tavistock Avenue and Blenheim Road modal filters with no-entry signs. 

The modal filters were implemented in October and November 2023 under an 18-month Experimental Traffic Management Order (ETMO). The first six months of this process formed the statutory consultation, where local people could provide feedback on the scheme during ‘live’ conditions.

During the ETMO process, we collected and analysed a significant amount of data, including traffic counts, cycling counts, bus journey times and London Fire Brigade response times to determine the impacts of the scheme and whether it was meeting its objectives.

To read more about what people told us during the ETMO period and the scheme monitoring data, see the ‘ETMO update leaflet’ in the ‘Useful documents’ section below.

After reviewing the monitoring data and statutory consultation feedback, and considering adjustments made to the scheme during the ETMO period in response to public comments, we feel the scheme has largely met its aims of reducing traffic and creating people-friendly streets that actively encourage walking, cycling and using public transport. 

On this basis, in February 2025, the Council decided to make the ETMOs permanent, while recommending a range of changes and improvements be investigated further. These include looking at more improvements across the wider Higham Hill area, including Higham Hill Road, reviewing signage around Blenheim Road and Tavistock Avenue, reviewing Blackhorse Junction, and looking at what further improvements can be made to the main road network in the borough. A full list of potential future improvements can be found in the ‘ETMO update leaflet’ in the ‘Useful documents’ section below.