Kentish Town underground station closes on June 26

• WE understand the frustrations of residents, businesses and organisations such as Kentish Town Community Centre in the May 4 CNJ following the announcement that Kentish Town tube station will be closing for up to year while renovations take place.

As your councillors, we called for a meeting with Transport for London so we could seek assurances about several things, including that the Thameslink will remain open and ask for answers as to why the station cannot remain partially open.

We also asked for TfL to engage with community groups and businesses as soon as possible and we believe that they will be announcing some dates for community drop-in sessions shortly.

We welcome investment to replace the aging escalators which have been too unpredictable in recent months, leading to several access restrictions.

But we also understand that the works will not deliver everything we want, such as step-free access for the Thameslink, and we will continue to lobby for these improvements.

However we are concerned that as the station closes, the Kentish Town station northbound bus stop (outside the former carwash) will be closing for several months while construction work takes place. This will limit how people can travel to the Northern line alternatives at Tufnell Park and Archway, as well as access Parliament Hill and Highgate.

At a time when people will rely more on buses, we need to see a proper replacement bus stop for the station and as your local Labour team, we will be campaigning for that to happen. We have launched a petition calling on TfL to find an alternative bus stop and you can find the link to sign this at https://twitter.com/hstplabour

We will continue to update residents on the works and lobby for our station to be back open as soon as possible.

CLLR JAMES SLATER &
CLLR SYLVIA MCNAMARA
Kentish Town North ward
CLLR MERIC APAK
CLLR GEORGIA GOULD &
CLLR JENNY HEADLAM-WELLS
Kentish Town South ward
ANNE CLARKE AM
Assembly Member for Barnet & Camden