Featured project

Epsom Town Centre Masterplan

Epsom & Ewell Borough Council

A collaborative non-statutory masterplan project born out of a desire to progress development of the town centre in the absence of an up-to-date local plan.

Creating a better-connected town centre means looking beyond transport in isolation. It requires an understanding of how streets, public spaces, development, parking and public transport work together to shape people’s experience of place.

Working with Epsom & Ewell Borough Council and David Lock Associates, Latcham provided the transport and mobility input to the Epsom Town Centre Masterplan – developing the transport evidence base, strategic movement framework and proposals needed to support regeneration and the emerging Local Plan.

“Please do something as Epsom could be amazing”

Public consultation response Epsom Town Centre Masterplan

Selected pages from the Vision 2050 transport strategy, illustrating the strategic frameworks, place analysis and design thinking that shaped the final recommendations.

Challenge

Balancing movement with the quality if place.

Epsom is well connected, characterful and busy – but movement through the town centre increasingly competes with the quality of the place itself.

The A24 carries around 24,000 vehicles a day through the centre, while the railway station, bus movements, public parking and major junctions place further pressure on streets and public spaces. At the same time, regeneration and new development is needed to support growth without compromising Epsom’s heritage, environmental quality or town-centre vitality.

The challenge was to bring these competing demands together – creating a transport framework that could support change while making the town centre easier, safer and more attractive to walk, wheel and cycle through.

Vision

A town centre where movement supports place – rather than defining it.

The vision was to rebalance Epsom’s streets around people and public life, while recognising the continuing role of the A24, public transport and car access.

Transport, public realm, green infrastructure and future development were considered as parts of one system – improving the arrival from the railway station, creating better pedestrian and cycling connections, greening streets and making public spaces more comfortable and enjoyable to use. The Masterplan itself calls for greater priority for pedestrians and cyclists while supporting the transition towards lower-carbon transport, and future use of public parking.

Working as part of the wider multidisciplinary team, Latcham helped translate that ambition into a spatial transport strategy capable of informing individual interventions as well as the wider Local Plan.

Project highlights

2040

Long-term masterplan horizon.

40 buses

per hour

with 20 separate bus routes, and 28 bus stops

Winner

Best Plan category

RTPI South East Awards

A joined-up approach to transport, public realm and regeneration.

Rather than treating the A24, railway station, parking and public realm as separate problems, Latcham developed them as interconnected parts of a wider spatial strategy.

Mapping and movement analysis established how the town centre worked today. From there, alternative interventions were explored – reconfiguring road space, simplifying crossings, widening footways, improving cycling connections, introducing planting and strengthening links between the railway station and the heart of the town.

Latcham’s work included the transport baseline and strategic movement framework, the draft transport strategy, town-centre and site-specific parking analysis, targeted interventions along the A24, station integration and public-realm improvements. Plans, diagrams and visualisations were used to test ideas and support discussion with the council officers and councillors, the highway authority and the wider project team.

The resulting transport work formed part of the evidence base for the borough’s draft local plan, with a strong focus on better public-realm experience and increasing walking, wheeling and cycling across the town centre.