Balham Town Centre

Balham is the smallest of the Town Centres in the Borough of Wandsworth with approximately 350 businesses. Balham town Centre provides strong local convenience shopping with two medium-sized supermarkets operated by Sainsbury's and Sommerfield as well as Marks & Spencer Simply Foods. The retail offer in Balham Town Centre has seen significant change with the growth of food and drink related establishments and an expansion, both in number and variety, of service providers. Balham offers vibrant evening entertainment with an enticing selection of restaurants, wine bars and pubs.

Balham also boasts a range of Town Centre names including WH Smith, Boots, Iceland, Woolworths, Caffe Nero,Pizza Express and Nandos. The increasing variety of speciality shops is attracting customers from a wider area.

A snapshot of Balham shows a healthy local Town Centre, with strong multi-cultural community infrastructure and an increasingly buoyant local economy. Over the next 3 years, Balham Town Centre will build on its strong retail base and growing evening economy to ensure that it remains a clean, safe and accessible place in which to live, work, shop and relax.

In recent years, Balham has witnessed significant change and development which is reflected by an increasingly affluent residential population. Balham is well served by public transport with both the Northern Line tube and overground rail into Victoria via Clapham Junction. Over 6 million journeys are made to and from Balham station each year, with 80% between Monday to Friday. Balham is also served by four bus routes, with 20 buses per hour in each direction, providing links to a wide range of destinations.

Residential areas around Balham Town Centre have become increasingly popular, resulting in a marked change in the social composition of the catchment area. The average price of a terraced house for the period January to March 2003 was £445,865 in Balham (SW12, SW11, SW4) whereas the England and Wales average was £107,238.

There are 21,000 residents within half a mile of Balham Town Centre, of these a higher than average proportion of the population are between the ages of 25 and 34.