YMCA London City and North has applied to demolish 184 Tottenham Lane and build 174 en-suite rooms. The Crouch End Fitness Centre is not in the new building.

The YMCA on Tottenham Lane has applied to knock down its Crouch End building and replace it with a new hostel for 174 young people. The charity submitted the planning application to Haringey Council on 4 September, according to its project website.

The new building would not include the Crouch End Fitness Centre. The gym has its entrance on Elmfield Avenue and takes up a large part of the current ground floor.

The application, reference HGY/2026/2308, is now listed as “submitted and under assessment” in the council’s major sites update for the Planning Sub-Committee on 5 October. It is not on that meeting’s agenda for a decision.

What is planned

The site sits where Tottenham Lane meets Elmfield Avenue and Rosebery Gardens, just north of the Crouch End shopping area. It is in Hornsey ward, next to the Crouch End ward boundary. The existing building has 155 single bedrooms. Most of it dates from the late 1920s and the late 1950s.

The details below come from the scheme as it was presented to councillors in July, in a pre-application briefing by council planning officers. The submitted plans may differ in detail. The briefing says the new building would have:

  • 174 bedspaces, 19 more than now
  • en-suite rooms in shared “cluster” flats of four to six bedrooms, each with a kitchen
  • ten “move-on” flats of two or three bedrooms, for residents getting ready to live independently
  • 10% of bedspaces wheelchair accessible
  • a reception, offices, meeting rooms, a residents’ lounge and a rear courtyard on the ground floor
  • a basement in the centre of the site
  • two parking spaces for maintenance or contractor vehicles and one blue badge space, off Rosebery Gardens
Bar chart of the 174 bedspaces proposed for the new Crouch End YMCA. Sixteen six-bed clusters hold 96 bedspaces, nine five-bed clusters hold 45, two four-bed clusters hold 8, five three-bed move-on flats hold 15 and five two-bed move-on flats hold 10. The current building has 155 single rooms.
How the 174 bedspaces would be split, from the July pre-application briefing. Chart by Crouch End News
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The residents are young people who have been homeless. The briefing notes that the site has been used as a hostel for more than a hundred years.

How tall it would be

The new building would be four storeys on Rosebery Gardens, rising to five at the Tottenham Lane corner, with a sixth-floor mansard roof along Tottenham Lane. On Elmfield Avenue it would step from three and four storeys up to six, then seven at the corner. The seventh storey is a roof enclosure for plant.

The YMCA’s own answers to consultation questions put the highest point at 24 metres, at the lift overrun. That is 5 metres above the tallest part of the current building. The charity says most of the new building sits around one to one and a half storeys above the existing roofline.

Council officers flagged height as the main design question. The briefing says the site is “prominent from an important view” out of the Crouch End Conservation Area, including from The Queen’s pub, which is Grade II* listed. Officers said the extra height “could be justified” if the design is of high quality.

What happens to the gym

The council briefing states plainly that the scheme “would not retain” the Crouch End Fitness Centre.

According to the briefing, the YMCA has leased the gym to an independent operator on a rolling short-term arrangement since late 2023. The YMCA says the operator took the space knowing a rebuild was being considered. It says a gym was in its original brief, but fitting one in would have made the building taller and denser than it thought acceptable.

Planning policy protects sports facilities as community infrastructure unless a replacement is provided. Officers pointed to other gyms on Tottenham Lane in response. The YMCA says some fitness classes could run from community rooms on the new ground floor, but the briefing records that this “is yet to be confirmed”.

We have not seen a statement from the Crouch End Fitness Centre about the plans.

When it could happen

The YMCA’s project site gives a target opening date of March 2029. Its July answers set out what has to come first:

  • planning permission
  • full funding
  • somewhere for current residents to live during the build

The charity said in July that work could start “at the earliest” in about a year, and that demolition and construction would take two to three years. It has committed to a rehousing strategy, moving residents to its other buildings or to partner housing.

What residents raised

The YMCA held exhibitions at Rokesly School on 14 May and at the Harringay Club on 11 June. The second one was added after people on Rosebery Gardens and Elmfield Avenue said they had not received leaflets for the first. It received 84 feedback forms.

The main concerns it lists are:

  • the height and bulk of the building, and daylight to neighbouring homes
  • noise from the rear courtyard, which backs onto gardens on both side streets
  • people gathering at the top of Elmfield Avenue
  • bin lorries moving to Elmfield Avenue, which is a School Street outside Rokesly School
  • noise and dust during two to three years of building work

In response, the YMCA says it has dropped a performance area from the courtyard design, added planting along the rear boundary and moved a gate forward to close off a recess between the main building and 52 Elmfield Avenue. It says bin collections would avoid School Street hours. It puts the gap between the new building and the Rokesly playground at over 25 metres.

What it means for you

  • If you want to comment: the application is on Haringey’s public planning register under HGY/2026/2308. The register did not load for us today, so we could not confirm the closing date for comments. Anyone can comment, and the council must consider every planning point made.
  • If you use the Crouch End Fitness Centre: nothing closes yet. Demolition cannot start before permission, funding and rehousing are in place, and the YMCA’s earliest estimate in July was about a year away. But the gym is not part of the new building.
  • If you live on Elmfield Avenue or Rosebery Gardens: the daylight and noise studies the YMCA promised should be in the application documents. A construction management plan would come later, closer to any start date.
  • If you want to follow it: we will report when the application goes to the Planning Sub-Committee. See also our Crouch End planning news page and roadworks and travel for Tottenham Lane.

Sources