St Margaret's Gateway

Aim: to encourage more people to use sustainable transport and accelerate the development of stalled sites

St. Margaret’s Gateway is a regeneration project at one of the key access points to Leicester. The project focuses on the rebuilding of St Margaret’s Bus Station and refurbishment of the surrounding streets as part of a major scheme to regenerate this part of the city centre.

The headlines

Investment: £10.5m
Project Sponsors: Leicester City Council
Start date: October 2020
Status: Complete

“These exciting plans to replace St Margaret’s Bus Station with a striking, new and carbon neutral building will signal the beginning of a revival of this part of the city.”

– Deputy City Mayor for Environment and Transportation Cllr Adam Clarke.

A new carbon neutral bus station will be constructed at the heart of the area – believed to be the first bus station to be built to net zero carbon standards in the UK. Bus passengers will benefit from a completely redesigned and improved internal layout with a new café, better seating and real time digital passenger information. The new design will include LED lighting, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, air source heat pumps and 750 square metres of solar panels, which will generate enough energy to power the station and feed extra energy back into the grid.

There will also be increased capacity for national and regional bus services with the number of bus bays increasing from 18 to 24. Electric bus charging points will be installed, and the new building will feature secure storage for up to 150 bikes.

In addition, improvements to footpaths and roads immediately surrounding the bus station are also proposed, with better facilities for pedestrians and cyclists, new landscaping and tree planting, and better and safer crossings to soften the impact of the ring road. This will help strengthen and improve links between key development sites and the city centre, which will indirectly accelerate the delivery of stalled sites.