Skyports and Brent Cross Town to enable advanced air mobility in London with new vertiport for eVTOL aircraft

Sky­ports has signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing with Brent Cross South Lim­it­ed Part­ner­ship, a joint ven­ture between Argent Relat­ed and Bar­net Coun­cil, to devel­op a pas­sen­ger air taxi ver­ti­port at Brent Cross Town.

The 180-acre devel­op­ment is in north west Lon­don, which is being regen­er­at­ed as a new £7 bil­lion mixed-use park town for the cap­i­tal and was select­ed as a prospec­tive loca­tion for the ver­ti­port due to its out­stand­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty into cen­tral Lon­don.

It is hoped a ver­ti­port at Brent Cross Town will cre­ate the oppor­tu­ni­ty for eVTOL air­craft ser­vices between oth­er Sky­ports ver­ti­ports in and around Lon­don and the rest of the UK. An inter­im mod­el could be built as ear­ly as 2024, with a per­ma­nent loca­tion con­struct­ed dur­ing the devel­op­ment phas­es of Brent Cross Town.

Dun­can Walk­er, CEO of Sky­ports, said: “This excit­ing project is a sign of huge progress with­in the indus­try. The very fact that ver­ti­ports are being planned for con­struc­tion in mixed-use neigh­bour­hoods such as Brent Cross Town demon­strates the direc­tion in which the indus­try is mov­ing and the increas­ing con­fi­dence in its suc­cess. 

“Our in-house team of air­port plan­ners, reg­u­la­to­ry experts, air­space experts, soft­ware and hard­ware devel­op­ers remains com­plete­ly focussed on ver­ti­ports which are safe, prac­ti­cal and in loca­tions which will make a pos­i­tive impact on dai­ly life”.

Brent Cross Town is the neigh­bour­hood at the heart of the Brent Cross Crick­le­wood regen­er­a­tion pro­gramme. The joint ven­ture is to devel­op a large-scale mixed-use devel­op­ment includ­ing new homes, retail and office space, as well as improved schools and green­spaces in the area.

Ear­ly work start­ed on site in ear­ly 2020 and con­struc­tion is also under­way on the new Brent Cross West sta­tion which will be com­plet­ed by the end of 2022. Build­ing on the strengths of this diverse part of the city, Brent Cross Town will draw inspi­ra­tion from the best of London’s long-estab­lished neigh­bour­hoods with all their com­plex­i­ty and char­ac­ter. 

The new neigh­bour­hood will pro­vide 6,700 homes and pedes­tri­an friend­ly streets and squares with local shops and restau­rants that will com­ple­ment the offer at Brent Cross Shop­ping Cen­tre. The com­mu­ni­ty will be sup­port­ed by first-class pub­lic trans­port infra­struc­ture, a new and improved net­work of walk­ing and cycle routes and a series of new parks and oth­er ameni­ties.

As spe­cial­ists in the plan­ning and con­struc­tion of ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture, Sky­ports will work with Brent Cross Town to share mar­ket insights and devel­op­ments in the AAM indus­try, under­take due dili­gence on the site and engage with exter­nal reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies such as the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty and local gov­ern­ment to obtain rel­e­vant per­mis­sions.

André Gibbs, Part­ner at Argent Relat­ed said: “We wel­come the oppor­tu­ni­ty to col­lab­o­rate with Sky­ports to pro­vide a ver­ti­port at Brent Cross Town and demon­strates our approach to future proof trans­port infra­struc­ture. The ver­ti­port would strength­en trans­port con­nec­tions into and out of cen­tral Lon­don and would com­ple­ment the new train sta­tion, the exist­ing tube links, com­pre­hen­sive road con­nec­tiv­i­ty and cycle­ways.”

The Brent Cross Town team togeth­er with Bar­net Coun­cil will pro­vide the essen­tial local knowl­edge to allow plans to progress, as well as lead intro­duc­tions with local stake­hold­ers and con­trac­tors, and facil­i­tate access to enable Sky­ports to under­take any pre­lim­i­nary inves­tiga­tive works.