Elmfield Road Bromley: First Designs Shown 10 September

Bromley Council will show the first designs for its Elmfield Road scheme on Thursday 10 September. It has also put a date on the building work for the first time: spring 2027.

The session is at Devonshire House on Elmfield Road itself. There are presentations at 4pm and 6pm, and drop-ins are welcome between the two. Residents and businesses on the road are the audience the council says it wants (Bromley Council, 1 September).

This is the second engagement session, not the first. In March the council held an open session at the same building, from 3pm to 7pm on 19 March, and asked people what Elmfield Road was like to use. That one had nothing to show: it was gathering views to “help shape emerging options” (Bromley Council, 9 March). Six months on, there are drawings.

What the council has actually committed to

The published detail is thin on design and specific on money and timescale. The council’s release names only “new planting and lighting” as the content of the scheme.

The contract record is more use. Bromley advertised the design work on Find a Tender in October 2025, and that notice sets out what the project is:

• Elmfield Road is a 6.58-hectare site next to Bromley South station, mostly office tenants, The Mall shopping centre and an NCP car park attached to it
• the design contract is worth £185,000 excluding VAT, £222,000 including it
• the appointed team runs the scheme through RIBA stages 1 to 7, from the first brief to post-completion review
• the commission started on 5 January 2026 and runs to 5 October 2027

Source: Find a Tender notice 067434-2025, published 22 October 2025 by the London Borough of Bromley.

That last date is the useful one. A design commission that covers the construction stages and ends in October 2027 is consistent with the council’s “works commence spring 2027”, and it is the closest thing to a published finish date anyone has offered.

The same notice explains why the council is doing this at all. Elmfield Road was picked out as a key employment site in the borough’s Employment Land and Space Study, completed in 2024, and in the Growth Plan 2024-27. A steering group was set up afterwards, and it is a wider table than the press release suggests. It includes property owners, businesses, Network Rail, the Greater London Authority, the Department for Business and Trade, the government’s Office for Investment, the Your Bromley business improvement district, and council planning, highways and estates officers. That group reviewed high-level design concepts in October 2024 and concluded the visioning work was not enough on its own, which is what led to the design contract.

Where Elmfield Road is, and why it matters

Elmfield Road runs parallel to Bromley High Street, linking Bromley South station to the entrance of the Glades. Most people walk part of it without registering it as a street in its own right, because it reads as the back of the shopping centre. The contract notice describes it as “predominantly occupied by office tenants”, along with the shopping centre and its car park.

That is the tension in the project. The council is treating a road that reads as the back of a shopping centre as a piece of the town centre worth £222,000 in design fees. The offices along it are what the Growth Plan counts as employment land worth protecting.

Councillor Yvonne Bear, executive councillor for renewal, recreation and housing, said the council was “moving forward with these plans to further enhance our town centre with this investment to create a more welcoming setting on Elmfield Road, which we know is a key hub for the local economy”.

What it means for you

If you work on Elmfield Road, or run a business on it, 10 September is the session that will show you what is being proposed before it is fixed. The council says feedback from the session will be used “in refining the proposals”, and that the details will be shared online “in due course”, so there is a window here that will not stay open.

Three practical points:

• You do not need to sit through a presentation. The 4pm and 6pm slots are the set pieces; drop-ins are welcome in between.
• Nothing is being built this year, or next spring. Works are not expected to start until spring 2027, so anyone planning around disruption has a long lead time.
• The council has not published the works budget. The £185,000 figure is the design fee only. What the improvements themselves will cost has not appeared in any council release or notice we can find.

If the council publishes the designs online after the session, we will link them here.

Our other Bromley Town coverage includes the roadworks and travel page, parking in Bromley and Bromley planning applications.

Sources

• Bromley Council: Join further engagement about Elmfield Road improvements, 1 September 2026
• Bromley Council: Engagement session taking place on options for Elmfield Road improvements, 9 March 2026
• Find a Tender: Multidisciplinary Design Services for the Elmfield Road Project, notice 067434-2025, published 22 October 2025 (site area, contract value, RIBA stages, contract dates, steering group membership)