St. Paul's Churchyard, London - 020 7332 3456 Piccadilly Circus Underground - 0343 222 1234 visit@cityoflondon.gov.uk

Brent Cross is in the London Borough of Barnet and contains the Brent Cross Shopping Centre. The area takes its name from an old crossroads near the River Brent and is not in the London Borough of Brent (that local authority lies to the west of the nearby A5 Edgware Road). It has no specific boundaries but in general only premises west of the Brent Cross Flyover, east of the M1 motorway and close to the North Circular are described as being in Brent Cross. The River Brent passes through it, flowing from east to west in a man-made channel.

When Brent Cross Shopping Centre opened in 1976 it was the third shopping centre of its type in the UK after the Bullring in Birmingham (1964) and the Haymarket Shopping Centre in Leicester (1973). It was initially constructed in a dumbbell shape running east-west parallel to the North Circular Road, with the two largest stores (John Lewis and Fenwicks) at the ends. It was expanded and renovated beginning in 1995, with additional shops and restaurants on an arm running north from the middle. A multi-storey car park replaced the remainder of the open parking area to the north.

Although it is smaller than more recent shopping centres such as the MetroCentre, Bluewater, Lakeside, Westfield London and St. David's Cardiff, it has one of the largest incomes per unit area of retail space in the UK.

Brent Cross currently offers 8,000 free car-parking spaces, but according to the planning application submitted in March 2008 will eventually introduce parking charges.

The car park of the shopping centre was used as a filming location for the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies.

Brent Cross Cricklewood is a planned new town centre development in Hendon and Cricklewood. The development is planned to cost around £4.5 billion to construct and will include 7,500 homes, 4,000,000 sq ft of offices, four parks, transport improvements and a 592,000 sq ft extension of Brent Cross Shopping Centre. The developers of the scheme are Hammerson and Standard Life. Construction is planned to start in 2018 and be completed in 2021-22.