TfL sometimes struggle to get the media to notice a good press launch, but I got lucky yesterday and stumbled upon their latest project at Waterloo station while travelling home from riding a duff bus. I knew something was up when I noticed an art workshop at the top of the Jubilee line escalators and a stash of luxurious-looking leaflets in the rack by the ticket machines. And I confirmed my suspicions at the foot of the escalators when I walked straight into a full-on bash celebrating the launch of the latest Art on the Underground project. Imagine there are a couple of dozen leaflet-clutchers milling around to the left of this swirly songbird artwork, all looking important and admiring their handiwork, because there were and I've cropped them out.
This is Go Find Miracles by Rory Pilgrim, a new sound installation that'll be played out along the moving walkway at Waterloo station for the next couple of weeks. It was inspired by something unexpectedly tangential - the connections between London's architecture and the Isle of Portland - and combines choral music and spoken word in a looping ten minute presentation. Recording took place at two underground locations, one the disused Jubilee line platforms at Charing Cross and the other a Portland stone mine, with singers including alumni of the Prison Choir Project and following a creative workshop at a feminist library. There are so many surprising layers to this project that you'll only fully unpick them if you read the dense text on the Art On The Underground page or pick up a leaflet, which hardly anyone passing through will. It is a top-quality leaflet on posh paper in six-part gatefold which opens out to reveal a colourful songbird poster, this because Art on the Underground still has a proper budget.
I diverted off my planned journey to ride the travelator there and back to experience Go Find Miracles for myself. I would show you a photo but the passageway remains lined by dozens of distracting adverts for alibaba.com, not swirly songbirds, because marketing always trumps art. My passage was accompanied by forceful poetry with a musical soundscape, also a whole new crowd of arty guests who looked like they might have contributed to the project. But just as I was getting into the sequence of call and response a male voice interrupted with a long announcement about CCTV, looking after your belongings and ended with See It Say It Sorted, which is about as far from poetry as you can get. By the time the philistine intrusion ended we'd skipped 20 seconds of the sound installation, because health and safety always trumps art, and nobody's ever going to hear the full 10 minutes anyway.
The best way to experience Go Find Miracles may thus be to listen to the audio file on Soundcloud without fear of interruption, but Rory and TfL would rather you came and heard it for yourself this week and next, 10am to 5pm only, along an ad-strewn travelator. It's enchanting but if it causes one single traveller to go beneath the surface to imagine new structures of repair and possibility, or to muse on breaking cycles of harm to find space for miracles, it'll be a miracle.
Route 700: Colliers Wood to Phipps Bridge Estate Location: London southwest Length of bus journey: 1½ miles, 7 minutes
Every so often, usually because of roadworks, TfL introduce a newtemporarybusroutewith ahighnumber. The latest is the 700, a number chosen because it replaces part of route 200, a lowly twiddler in the borough of Merton. It's needed because there are joint gas and water main works on the edge of Mitcham Cricket Green, which incidentally are causing havoc with other buses being diverted round jammed-up roads but that's a different story. What's important is that the 200 is normally the only route down Church Road and that's now blocked for two months, so a special route was needed to reach the Phipps Bridge Estate which would otherwise be bus-less. And that's the 700.
In good news it's a spanking new bus. A gleaming double decker has been gifted to the route, just the one most of the time because it's not a long circuit and one vehicle can generally cope. The young bus fans who came out to ride the route were very excited by the vehicle, and yes the youth contingent were out in force with their TikToks, vastly outnumbering the freeloading pensioners you'd normally expect. One of them said his mate skipped school to ride the first day on the SL4, that's how hardcore they are. It also means there already multiplereelsandvideos available if you want to see what shenanigans occurred aboard the 700, or instead to watch several minutes of the journey viewed from not quite the front seat. I'll thus merely summarise for the old school contingent who still like text.
In good news there's a map, courtesy of TfL's We Only Make Maps For New Routes Department. In bad news the map's wrong, also the timings on it don't seem to be right, also I saw no timetables at bus stops round the route, also route 700 is much less frequent than the 200 it replaces, also the iBus system inside the bus thought we were on route 57, so let's go for a ride and I'll point out all the duff bits.
The 700 starts outside Colliers Wood station, which you can tell because the stop has a special tile saying '700 Shuttle bus'. Indeed The Blokes Who Swap The Tiles have done a fine job all along the route, apart that is from adding '700 Shuttle bus' tiles at four stops where the 700 isn't stopping. The Blokes Who Change The Timetables have done less well, adding timetables to precisely zero of the stops I looked at, although apparently they have added them at some stops because I saw it on YouTube. I did whip out an app to see if that could tell me when the next bus was coming but the live arrivals thing wasn't working... or maybe I just got unlucky.
According to the map Route 700 runs 'every 20 mins 06:00-19:00 Mon to Sat' but this is nottrue. The 20 minute frequency is only before 9am and between 3.30pm and 7pm, and only on weekdays, otherwise it's every 30 minutes. I turned up late morning and believed the map, which was foolish because technically I could have walked to the far end of the route before the bus even turned up.
Off we went past Dunelm and a couple of stops the 200 still stops at, but then we were on our own down Church Road. The route really comes into its own once it turns off into the Phipps Bridge estate, this being part of TfL's commitment to run buses within 400m of as many Londoners as possible. What was odd was that all the bus stops on the other side of the road had yellow covers saying 'Bus stop not in use', despite also having '700 shuttle bus' tiles underneath. According to the map they're all served, also according to the route listing shown on the TfL website, also according to the app I flipped open. But in real life they're not being served, four stops in total, because the bus isn't doing what the map says it is.
The map says the 700 goes as far as the roundabout outside the parish church, then turns round and follows the same route back. What appears to be happening in real life is that buses are skipping the detour round the estate on the way back, instead heading straight back direct along Church Road. Practically it makes sense, it's quicker, plus everyone on the estate can board the looping bus on the way out without needing to wait for the way back. But I think it's a last minute change because all the maps and tiles say these stops are in use and only the yellow covers say they're not. It certainly confused a mother and daughter waiting patiently at Frensham Court for a clockwise bus towards Colliers Wood, only for our driver to wind down his window and yell over to cross the road and climb in because he wasn't coming back.
It is amazing how much of a mess you can make of a 7 minute bus route, but turning a 'there-and-back' into a loop without telling anyone certainly managed that. Perhaps these were just Day One wrinkles but who's to say, and fortunately unless you live on the Phipps Bridge Estate these two months of inconvenience will just pass you by.
45 Squared 25) MARKET SQUARE, N9
Borough of Enfield, 70m×50m
Also a town's centre but utterly different to Richmond, that's Market Square in Edmonton. New not old, enclosed not open, basic not aspirational, blouses not yogawear, also you can't drive a vehicle into it which I think is a first in this year-long series. Come with me to the heart of Edmonton Green Shopping Centre, N9's sinuous concrete stripmall.
Edmonton had a fairly typical town centre until the late 1960s when the newly-formed Enfield council decided to bulldoze the majority in favour of full-on retail redevelopment. Frederick Gibberd & Co (of Harlow fame) came up with an innovative brutalist concoction mixing tower blocks with shopping opportunities and car parks, while Edmonton Green was substantially remodelled for through traffic. A new bus station replaced the old marketplace and all the stalls were moved into a large covered square at the core of the new development. North Mall bears off from one corner, South Mall from the opposite corner and a lowlit connector to the outside world from one side, all feeding shoppers into Market Square. Five parallel bands of glass let the light in.
The original stalls are long gone, replaced by brighter permanent units with standard fascias. Some are small with space for key-cutting, engraving or a nail bar, a few are substantially larger and the majority appropriate for medium-sized traders in luggage, Caribbean groceries or dried nuts. The three prime corner units are all occupied by greengrocers, such is the demand for low-priced fruit and veg hereabouts, all neatly arrayed in bands of red, orange and green across hundreds of plastic bowls. Why walk all the way to Asda or Lidl when Letherbarrow's has all the loose tomatoes, peppers and grapes any family could need? Then there's Crystal Meats who are from the shrinkwrapped tray school of butchery, any three for £10, also Fashion Express who sell those huge checked bags ideal for taking washing to the launderette. It's all impressively tidy.
Stallholders who bother to turn up on Sunday aren't always rushed off their feet so wait patiently lest anyone genuinely need a quilted bathmat, marbled laundry bin or silver chain. The proprietor of the shoe stall shares a table outside Koffee Box watching not much of the world pass by. The couple who run Men's Fashion have chosen to arrive an hour late and are arranging their polo shirts and £2 tees beside the walkway in the hope that some will have been sold by the time they wheel the racks back in. Meanwhile a few proper shops ring the outer edge of the square, the remaining beacons including JD Sports and William Hill, although the draw was considerably higher when Superdrug was still a Tesco. As for the Railway Tavern this claims to be a traditional pub, and indeed the original did stand by the level crossing on the Green for years, but this glum replacement has all the character of a dingy unit in the corner of a postwar market.
Oh and there's also an upstairs, assuming you can get there. For some impractical reason it's only accessible up a single tissue-strewn staircase, or an adjacent lift, so first floor businesses must suffer terribly from low footfall. That said if you want the Turkish accountants, the special needs theatre or the local MP's office, you're more likely to be on a mission than just ambling by. What's unexpected is that after you've walked round the balcony a separate passage heads out onto the open roof... and into a street in the sky. A lot of councils tried mall-top living in the 70s, notably in Wood Green, but it's still surprising to see a row of eight townhouses on top of Clarks and Cardfactory, complete with washing hanging on the line and a lady sipping coffee in her front garden.
My initial conclusion was that Edmonton Green Shopping Centre was a postwar success, still very well used and with a minimum of empty units. Then I remembered that there is essentially nowhere else for Edmonton's shoppers to go, the exterior retail offering having been so comprehensively extinguished, so of course tumbleweed has been held at bay. At least Market Square itself remains a cut above what most towns of this size offer, still appealingly blessed with everyday essentials, so long as you don't look round the edge or go upstairs.
45 Squared 24) THE SQUARE, TW9
Borough of Richmond, 60m
In the very centre of Richmond, junctionally speaking, several fine Georgian streets and passageways come together beneath a zinc-scaled dome. One of the main streets is The Quadrant, one of the passageways is The Passage and stretching briefly to the east is The Square. This isn't square, just as The Quadrant isn't part-circular, although it may once have been more rectangular than it now looks, perhaps. Sorry, I thought the centre of a historic town would be easier to research, but rest assured there is a history behind all this somewhere.
The Square is an evasive thoroughfare, plainly labelled on a couple of street signs but not necessarily on the correct addresses. It connects two landmark buildings, the Old Fire Station and the Dome, and I believe once passed behind the former and now loops round the latter. The Dome is everything a prominent Victorian building should be, especially if you need activewear for your next yoga session because the lower storey is now a branch of Lululemon. Excitingly the top floor is currently up for lease as open plan office accommodation, including a boardroom inside the dome itself offering 360 degree views in case your meeting content is particularly tedious.
Also part of this odd complex is a small Persian restaurant called Saffron with a reassuringly dense menu pinned up outside, should you fancy an al fresco skewering. Even smarter is Major Son & Phipps alongside, a thin estate agents with a chic Parisian feel to its signage, one of whose staff is a dog called Scooby who merits his own page on the company website. Across the road a plaque above the Nationwide Building Society references The Imperial 1890, this being the pub that once occupied the building before a pizza chain moved in in the 1980s. The bubble tea shop isn't original either, ditto the Argentinian steakhouse and pizzeria in what is now The Square but used to be The Passage. Do try to keep up.
The final standout building is the Old Fire Station, an overtwiddly redbrick number from 1870 with a distinctive clock tower that would have looked right at home in the centre of Trumpton. Look out for the carved heads of two moustachioed Victorian firefighters above the ex-entrance. When fire engines grew too big the main body became a shop and is currently yet another estate agents with a solicitors' office perched above. Meanwhile the front end became public conveniences, but Richmond council don't believe in those any more so it's now a coffee shop whose slogan is "Every single step is artisanal", so still very much taking the piss.
The Square is only brief but everyone who heads south round Richmond's one-way system passes very briefly through half of it, and now you know what it's called even if it's hard to discern precisely where it starts and why it finishes.
As part of this year's Railway200 celebrations, special events and community get-togethers with a rail connection are taking place across the country. And yesterday a very special one took place at Motspur Park station because, coincidentally in this 200th anniversary year, it was celebrating its 100th birthday.
How did I know this was happening? Joe Brown always posts a London rail anniversary on Twitter and Bluesky every morning and yesterday it was that Motspur Park was 100 years old. Ooh a centenary, I thought, and on a Saturday too. I wondered if anything special was going on... and it was.
Motspur Park is a full-on cliché of a suburban railway station in that before it opened there was nothing here but farms and fields and within ten years, hey presto, ubiquitous commuter avenues. It was also an afterthought in that trains ran direct from Raynes Park to Worcester Park for 60-odd years but only in 1925 did the railway company add an intermediate halt to exploit the area's potential.
Effectively it means the community of Motspur Park is 100 years old too so they pulled out all the stops and organised an exhibition in a library. To be fair it was a very good exhibition with an extraordinary centrepiece, and several very important people turned up to celebrate. There was also cake.
The local MP turned up. This is southwest London so he's a Liberal Democrat, but he hoped Labour's nationalisation strategy went well and urged us all to get behind rail travel and rail expansion. He also praised the strong community connections in West Barnes and Motspur Park.
The Mayor of Merton turned up. He admitted to being a railway fan and urged everyone to watch Jago Hazzard's new video about Motspur Park station. He said the recent completion of step-free access at the station was a gamechanger locally. He also praised the strong community connections in West Barnes and Motspur Park.
sidenote
Did the Mayor of Merton come by train? No he came by car (a chauffeur-driven black Ford Mondeo, registration M1 LBM). An hour after the event the car was back in its special space outside the entrance to Merton Civic Centre. To be fair there aren't any direct trains, and I wouldn't risk coming by K5 bus either.
The two of them also cut a ribbon outside the station. All yesterday's speeches were supposed to take place outside the station but they moved most of them inside the library instead because of the hot weather. After cutting the ribbon Paul and Martin held up an original station sign for the cameras, this too exactly 100 years old to the day.
The Vicar of the local church turned up. She blessed the station, which arguably is a strange thing to do, but she got away with it because her prayer was also addressed to all those who pass through the station. "May they go to places of joy, may they all find seats".
sidenote
Do any other rail stations have a 100th birthday this year? According to Wikipedia, only four surviving British stations opened in 1925. Two are Croxley and Watford on the Metropolitan line so they don't count for Railway200 purposes. The only genuine railway centenarians this year are Motspur Park and Penmere in Cornwall.
SWR's Community Manager turned up. She said SWR had decided to focus all their Railway200 celebrations around station birthdays, but Motspur Park was the only one to have a proper 100th birthday this year. She loved the celebratory bunting around the station and across the local shops. She also said she was amazed and impressed by quite how many people had turned up.
One of Railway200's top brass turned up. He seems to appear where the best anniversaries are, so yesterday it was Motspur Park's 100th and today it's the 50th anniversary of the reopening of the North Norfolk Railway. He said a proper centenary plaque would be installed in an appropriate location later. He was also inspired and humbled by how the campaign he joined two years ago had inspired this local community and so many others.
sidenote
When exactly is the proper 200th birthday of railways in Britain? It's arguable, do you go with Stockton and Darlington in 1825 or the Rainhill trials in 1829 or some other event? But essentially who cares. If you disagree you're just an opinionated bloke in an armchair whereas the Railway200 team have picked a date and made great things happen.
Christian Wolmar turned up. He gave a talk in the library before the ribbon cutting and the speeches took place. He also hung around to sign some books.
One of the Friends of West Barnes Library turned up and led the speeches. He seemed quite excited that everyone would be going in and out of the library at least twice because this would do wonders for their visitor numbers. He was also genuinely moved that well over 100 people had turned up.
And Paul Gumbrell turned up, and he'd brought this.
This is part of the layout of the Green Valley Railway, a model layout based in a back garden in West Barnes. They only had room for a small proportion of it here, a representation of the line through Motspur Park as it was on its opening day, complete with ropey footbridge, Hornby island platform and specially-commissioned model gasometers. The modern Motspur Park station sign in the centre was the perfect final flourish.
This is not what you expect to find in the middle of a library complete with two trains circling round, and I think everyone was fairly blown away.
sidenote
The Green Valley Railway holds three open weekends each year and the next is in two weeks' time. The Edroy Garden Line's Summer Gala Open Weekend takes place on 26th and 27th July from 1pm-5pm at 173 Westway SW20 9LR.
Elsewhere within the library was an exhibition about the history of Motspur Park, also a scale model of the local estate in the 1920s, also a table selling local history books and centenary fridge magnets, also a framed board for Motspur Park Monopoly (not for sale). A separate Picnic in the Park had been scheduled for the afternoon. The effort here was off the scale and it was a privilege to drop in on a cohesive community that bothers to turn out in large numbers for events like this.
And all because a station opened here 100 years ago, because railways have truly shaped Britain, not just Motspur Park.
Earlierthisweek the Mayor opened London's largest new park since the 2012 Olympics. It's Springfield Park in Tooting, and given Sadiq went to school less than half a mile away he was surely* well chuffed.
Springfield Park covers 32 acres around the rim of a new health campus, so is a substantial chunk of recreational space. It has grassy bits, wetland bits, humpy bits, wildflower bits and also a pavilion cafe for the purchase of coffee and croissants. It's not a cross-the-capital must-do but it is very pleasant and a proper local boon. It also has quite a history.
Surrey County Pauper Lunatic Asylum opened here in 1840, expanded incrementally and was renamed Springfield Mental Hospital after WW1. At its peak it had over 2000 patients and also an adjacent dairy farm to keep several of them occupied. Parts of that farm were sold off for housing, then the remainder for a girls' secondary school and a 9-hole golf course. The Central London Golf Centre opened in 1992 (polo shirts and smart tops only) and proved a popular destination for inner city golfers, even Michael Aspel. You can perhaps see where this is heading.
The hospital meanwhile was coping with an increasingly old set of facilities across 67 ageingbuildings, so 15 years ago a decision was made to rebuild and restructure. A modern health campus was planned intermingled with over 1200 new homes, literally embedding mental health services within the community. What we have now is Springfield Village incorporating Springfield University Hospital... and on the site of the old golf course is Springfield Park.
The main spine road is Springfield Drive, which at first sight could be any new development anywhere. Four-storey blocks of vernacular flats line the eastern flank with multiple short mews bearing off, some still under construction. But several of the buildings on the western side are in fact occupied by wards, day units and clinical specialists, also assessment and tribunal suites, also well-hidden car parks for those attending appointments from across five boroughs. If it doesn't look anything like a normal hospital, that's because it isn't.
Springfield Village's focal point is Chapel Square, one side of which is the Victorian hospital chapel which is now occupied by a proper gymnasium (i.e. for doing gymnastics rather than grunting and pumping). The square would be a nice place to sit were most of it not occupied by a zigzagging ramp, leaving space for just three long concrete perches. What is nice is that those mingling outside the cafes could be medical staff, could be mental health patients or could be flat-owning professionals from around the corner, and everyone just gets on together, or at least appears to.
The original hospital building still stands and from the park resembles a huge stately home with multiple branching wings. The NHS has entirely evacuated leaving room for an exclusive collection of luxury apartments, obviously, because something's got to help fund all this regeneration. It's been branded The 1840 to help emphasise its historic provenance, although only the central hub with 1 8 4 0 written in the brickwork is really that old and one wing should more accurately be called The 1874. More awkwardly it creates a vast gated enclave in the heart of Springfield Village, making it unnecessarily awkward for those in the plebbier flats on Springfield Drive to reach the park.
And the park is well worth getting to. It's approximately L-shaped and a good ten minutes walk from one end to the other, as befits land that used to be a golf course until 2018. Most of it's grass but thankfully it's a lot more varied than that, including a wetlandstripe along the western edge. I don't think these are converted water hazards, they're a bit deep for that, but I did spot dragonflies from the footbridge and also copious butterflies in the long grass alongside.
One large grass oval is essentially an amphitheatre, or alternatively a picnic terrace, while a web of paths weaves throughout making this a good spot for a jog or stroll. The obligatory fitness circuit has been included, although each piece of apparatus is really no more than a few chunks of wood so probably cost the developers less than installing a couple of fitted kitchens. Intriguingly it is still a private trust that has long-term responsibility for the park, Wandsworth council having turned down the offer of buying it for £1 because they couldn't afford the upkeep.
Like the Olympic Park a full-time team of gardeners keeps everything in good order, although I note that the only patch of unparched green grass in the entire Village is on the verge outside the showhome because that's where the priority is. Close by is one of the final crescents of new homes, this within the footprint of the old golf course and permitted only because it was declassified as Metropolitan Open Land to permit partial development. It'll be easier to walk through to the park from the main street after this rim of townhouses is complete.
A word about the local bus service. Route G1 has always dropped by, in a ridiculously contorted way, and back in May route 315 was extended to terminate here as well. Absurdly only one bus stop has been provided within the whole of Springfield Village, despite two being shown in the consultation documentation. Alas the proposed stop near Chapel Square never materialised, the pavement's edge instead occupied by parking bays, so the bus goes over 900m without stopping straight past where most people work and live. I don't know who didn't liaise with who but it is a criminal waste of public transport opportunity.
The jewel in the park is the area at the top end closest to Wandsworth Common. Here spoil from the redevelopment has been landscaped into a scenic mound, with a paved spiral to the summit which has already been joined by desire line paths from those who can't be arsed to go the long way. From the upper benches you can look down towards a sensory garden, a cylindrical shelter, a playground area and the inevitable cafe which opened last Saturday. Toast Stores are offering a very limited menu at present but the pavilion was packed out yesterday suggesting Springfield Park's already sprung to life.
Yesterday Ofcom agreed to Royal Mail's request to deliver 2nd class mail slower and on fewer days. Great, said Royal Mail, we'll start doing just that from 28th July. You'll either have to post your letters and cards earlier or shrug and put up with it.
There are three key aspects.
a) Saturdays will be excluded
b) Deliveries will take place on alternate weekdays
c) Delivery targets will be eased
The Saturday thing
Currently Ofcom requires "at least one collection every Monday to Saturday" and "at least one delivery every Monday to Saturday". In future, for 2nd class mail, Saturdays will be removed from the requirements.
This means if you want a letter to arrive by Saturday, you'll have to readjust your posting date so it arrives by Friday. For example if someone you know has a birthday on Saturday 26th July, posting it three days before on Wednesday July 23rd should be adequate. But if someone you know has a birthday on Saturday 2nd August, it'll need to go in the box a day earlier on Tuesday 29th July.
The change won't affect letters posted on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays because these should continue to arrive before Saturday. But it will affect letters posted on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, all of which should arrive later because Saturday's no longer a "working day".
Although Saturday will no longer be counted as a 2nd class collection day, in practice Royal Mail intends to collect letters anyway. This is because 1st class letters do still have to be collected on Saturdays and Royal Mail doesn't know which is which until they've been collected. However although 1st class letters will continue to enter the sorting process immediately, 2nd class letters can now be set aside on Saturday and sorted on Monday.
The alternate weekdays thing
This is where Royal Mail starts significantly saving money. Currently it has to deliver 2nd class mail six days a week. In future it only has to deliver on alternate weekdays, which is just two or three days a week.
Here's their graphic.
The expectation is that one week you'll get 2nd class mail delivered on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the next week only on Tuesday and Thursday. Previously all twelve boxes in this grid would have contained a green envelope, now only five do.
Effectively Royal Mail will split their delivery routes into two halves, A and B. On any particular day only one or the other will get 2nd class deliveries. This means only half the staff will be needed, hence considerable savings.
Here's my graphic.
Previously you'd never go more than one day without a potential 2nd class delivery. Now you might go three days without one, with either Friday-Sunday or Saturday-Monday skipped each week.
Viewed like this it is a remarkable drop in service. Ofcom's gambit is that you'll barely notice - all the same mail will still arrive, just imperceptibly later.
Also the A/B pattern won't always be rigidly stuck to. In weeks with a Bank Holiday Monday the same delivery pattern as last week will apply, so Week 1 will be followed by Week 1 or Week 2 by Week 2. It means the usual gap of '2 working days' will still apply, even if in reality that means no 2nd class post from Thursday to Tuesday or from Friday to Wednesday.
1st class mail will continue to be delivered daily, even on Saturdays, probably alongside parcels. The downside is that decoupling 1st and 2nd class deliveries may end up costing Royal Mail extra, and this could be passed on to the consumer by raising 1st class prices even further.
The eased target thing
Currently Royal Mail are tasked with delivering 98.5% of 2nd class mail within three days. The new D+3 target is 95%, or nineteen letters out of twenty, an easement to reflect the introduction of alternate day delivery.
At present Royal Mail have three potential days to deliver 2nd class mail and still hit their target. In the future they may have two potential delivery days or they may have just one, depending on which Week it is. For example a 2nd class letter posted on Monday could currently be delivered on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. In future the delivery window will either be Tuesday/Thursday or just Wednesday, which doesn't leave Royal Mail much room for error.
A new D+5 target of 99% will also be introduced. This is to try to stop delayed mail hanging around in the system, in this case for any longer than a week. Combine the two and Royal Mail now has to deliver 95% of 2nd class mail within 3 days and 99% within 5 days. For half the population this gives them just two opportunities to deliver.
1st class targets are also being changed. Currently 93% should be delivered the next day and this is being reduced to 90%. Ofcom argues this should aid efficiencies and is still higher than comparable European countries. Again there's a new 'tail' target, specifically that 99% of 1st class mail be delivered in three days.
within 1 day
within 3 days
within 5 days
1st class
90% (was 93%)
99% (new)
2nd class
95% (was 98.5%)
99% (new)
It's not much of an easement all told, but expect your mail to be arriving inexorably slower all the same.
An example
Currently a 2nd class letter posted on a Wednesday has a 98.5% chance of being delivered by Saturday.
Next month a 2nd class letter posted on a Wednesday has a 95% chance of being delivered by Monday.
It's not the end of the world.
But it's not great.
• Letter volumes reached their highest point around 2005 but have been falling since, and have halved since 2011.
• 1st class stamps increased from £1.10 in April 2023 to £1.70 in April 2025, and 2nd class from 75p to 87p.
• 62% of residential users agreed they send fewer letters because of the cost.
• On average, a UK household spends 60p per week on postal services.
• One in four UK adults would struggle to afford a book of 2nd class stamps if they had to buy them next week.
• As of last month, redirected mail changed from being treated as a 1st class service to a 2nd class service.
• The new 'tail' targets should mean that virtually no 1st class mail is delivered later than 2nd class.
• Ofcom reckons stamp prices would rise faster in the future if these changes weren't introduced.
• Some restructuring may be necessary, so don't expect everything to change with a bang on 28th July.
In summary
Ofcom wants you to know two things...
✉ Unless there are 1st class or other priority letter or parcels for you, you will not receive letter deliveries on Saturday.
✉ Any 2nd class letters posted on Wednesday to Saturday may arrive a day later than now (excluding Sunday).
Often the best value travel comes from a rover ticket, and this is an absolute bargain.
The Senior Rover allows unlimited train travel on the c2c network beyond London, i.e. all the stations on this map, for the measly sum of £7. It can only be used after 9.30am on weekdays, not at weekends, and a £10 option also exists allowing travel into London too.
Full terms and conditions here.
The catch is you have to be over 65, which I'm not, OR you can be over 60 with a Senior Railcard, which I am. So I headed out to Upminster yesterday morning, bought myself a Senior Rover and went on a proper south Essex safari.
The man in the ticket office at Upminster didn't ask for proof I was eligible, merely glanced at a flash of railcard, maybe even didn't look at all.
I gave the ticket a really good bash by visiting all the stations around the central loop. That's Upminster down to Grays, then out to Pitsea, then back to Upminster... ten stations in total. And because the trains run every half hour I spent 30 minutes in each location, attempting to walk to somewhere interesting within half a mile of the station and then back again. Let's see how I did.
Ockendon → Little Belhus Country Park
Rather than walk towards the medieval church or the postwarestate I headed west, past the Next depot, toward the former landfill site. It's now Little Belhus Country Park, a half-open partly-decontaminated scrubland sprawling down to the M25. A few hardcore paths stretch off to a big loop round a reptile-friendly wetland area, although I didn't manage to get that far, only to the scattered logs, stacked tyres and fenced-off turbine. It's all a bit bleak frankly, also I'm a bit nervous of a park that says "keep to the designated path at all times", although it might be a decent dog-walking loop if you've already done all the nicer local circuits. If nothing else the daisies are great at the moment, there must be tens of thousands across the lumpy crust of hard-baked topsoil, and essentially there is nothing else.
My Senior Rover opened the ticket gates no problem.
Chafford Hundred → Thames View Hill
Almost every visitor to the station crosses the slalom overpass to enter Lakeside, the quintessential shopping mall. I aimed in the opposite direction instead, deep into the estate past whorls of 80s housing. Follow the correct arm off the roundabout and you reach the foot of a low sandy cliff, this because Chafford Hundred was built across a humpy landscape pitted with quarries. I only had time to climb Thames View Hill, a brief golden ridge on a thin tongue of woodland, estimated ascent 30 seconds. Here was the promised panorama, although the only sliver of Thames was a tiny patch of grey beneath the arc of the QE2 Bridge and everything else was concealed behind Barratt-style rooftops. Nice pylons though. And if you do ever fancy an unexpectedly weirdwalk round cliffs and gorges, give the mall a miss and spend a couple of hours exploring the real Chafford Hundred instead.
My Senior Rover failed to open the ticket gates. A member of gateline staff let me out, no questions asked, and someone in the ticket office pressed a button to let me back in.
Grays → Grays Beach Riverside Park
Again I walked in the less-travelled direction - across the level crossing, past the council offices and down towards the riverside. This being the Thames estuary there are huge floodgates designed to protect adjacent flats from flooding and these were closed, forcing a longer walk past bleak grey tower blocks and speculative newbuilds. Four can-clutching gentlemen lay sprawled at the far end of the car park, the local derelict-looking pub not yet being open. But eventually I reached the waterfront and the unexpectedly upbeat Thurrock Yacht Club, its sleek craft either stashed on the quayside or bobbing in the estuary opposite Broadness. The 'beach' in the Beach Park is an elliptical sandpit and has a better view of a renewable biomass power plant than of the Thames... and yet somehow I'd much rather live here than at our next stop.
My Senior Rover failed to open the ticket gates. The bloke on the gate said he'd never heard of it and was bemused it didn't show a destination, but I talked my way through (and back in again).
Tilbury → Civic Square
Normally I'd head past the port to the cruise terminal, Windrushjetty and Tilbury Fort but that was too far to hike in the time available. Instead I walked to the heart of the real Tilbury, the shops at Civic Square, at the centre of the lowly web of streets built for dockers and portworkers. I passed bleach-blonde mums with pushchairs, baked-bronze blokes in t-shirts, hopeful ladies standing in the doorways of their empty shops and vaping teens loitering outside shuttered takeaways. By contrast Civic Square looked well-scrubbed with recently-revamped parking spaces, bright paving and pedestrianisation continuing apace around the war memorial. It's all part of a £23m grant from the last government's Town Fund, not that it worked because they came third at the General Election behind Labour and Reform. To better understand downtrodden Britain, come to Tilbury.
My Senior Rover failed to open the ticket gates but another gate was open so I just walked out. By the time I got back the gateline was staffed again, and he knew exactly what I was clutching.
East Tilbury → Bata Factory
East Tilbury is something else altogether, accessed across sweeping marshes stalked by lines of pylons and preparatory works for the Lower Thames Crossing. An outpost of Modernisthouses exists between Coalhouse Fort and Mucking Landfill, located here because in 1932 Czech shoe magnate Thomas Bata chose this site for his first British factory. Once 300 high streets had a Bata shoeshop but foreign imports inevitably led to the factory closing in 2006, and the landmark buildings are now marooned inside a private industrial park. I got inside in 2016 as part of the inaugural Essex Architecture Weekend, but on this occasion got no further than Thomas's statue on a parched lawn outside his main office and leather factory. If you do decide to follow in my footsteps read the council's Conservation Area plan first and enjoy exploring properly.
My Senior Rover failed to open the ticket gates again and I was beginning to feel somewhat oppressed. Nevertheless the member of staff opened the adjacent gate and let me out without checking what I'd used.
Stanford-le-Hope → town centre loop
Finally somewhere I'd never been before, despite our housekeeper once living close by. This old estuary town boasts a medieval church atop a rare hill, also a knotweed-choked stream flowing out towards Mucking Flats. The town centre is formed by a triangle of streets, the High Street now trumped in importance by the curve of King Street. Here tattooed limbs are on display outside the coffee shop, the clock outside the former jewellers is stuck at noon, the butcher sells proper meat and the bakery doesn't need a name because everyone samples its loaves and iced buns anyway. The sandwich shop by the war memorial is new and does brisket-loaded nachos every Tuesday, this because we've nudged towards slightly more aspirational Essex. As for the weatherboarded pub on Church Hill, the semi-orange Rising Sun, the chalkboard outside ignores menus and ales, instead confirming "The colour is 'Salsa Mix' so please stop asking".
There are no gates on the eastbound platform, only pads, so my Senior Rover proved unnecessary.
Pitsea → Pitsea Mount
This is where I switched lines and turned back towards London so I didn't have 30 minutes to wait, I had either less or more. I chose less because I once went to the 24 hour Tesco beyond the flyover on a date and have no burning desire to return. I briefly climbed the scrubby hill overlooking the roundabout, the one place round here that's not going to flood one day, and looked out towards the row of giant cranes at London Gateway Port. If I'd had more time I'd have walked down to Wat Tyler Country Park, a recreational island amid the estuarine marshes, but maybe I'll do that next time I buy a Senior Rover because there's a very obvious follow-up to today's post ticking off all the stations from Pitsea out to Shoeburyness.
My Senior Rover failed to open the ticket gates again. I pushed through the sidegate instead, and on the way back in the bloke in the ticket office gestured that I should push through the sidegate again so I did.
Basildon → Town Square
The new town of Basildon gained its station in 1974, conveniently located by the shops, so I got to do a full circuit of the town centre to see how much had changed since I was last here in 2018. The anchor department store is now a shell with DEBEN half-written on the roof. The whimsical mechanicalclock inside Eastgate is increasingly ignored. Freedom House has been demolished and replaced by a less thrilling modern development primed with restaurants and a cinema rather than shops. Brutalist Brooke House survives, its V-shaped supports overlooking a blanker East Square. The Market has been relocated to not many cabins in St Martin's Square. An entire block opposite Greggs has been flattened because housing will be more useful than retail. Effectively the town centre's still busy but the 20th century is inexorably being replaced by the 21st as regeneration funding allows. Oh and the WH Smith has unapologetically evolved into a TG Jones, this in the last few days, but I think that's happened everywhere.
My Senior Rover failed to open the ticket gates again. On my way out of the station the bloke at the gateline insisted I inserted my ticket again before nodding and beckoning me through. On my way back in a different bloke looked at the ticket after he let me through and said "ah, zones 1 to 6, you want that platform up there", despite the text very clearly saying 'excl. Zones 1 to 6'. Staff training at c2c is clearly inadequate.
Laindon → Langdon Hills
Laindon predates Basildon and is much less interesting, sorry, especially close to the station. I crossed the railway to the former plotlands at Langdon Hills, looping round a most peculiar housing development at the foot of Marks Hill. Six rising walkways weave past what look like the front doors of tiny wooden shacks, but they're actually two-storey three-bed townhouses with more rooms, a small garden and parking downstairs, separately accessed. So unexpectedly spacious are they that one of the houses on Puckleside has been painted blue and named The Tardis, complete with blue plants beside its blue gate and a police box and lamp outside the front door. I would never ever have thought to walk this way had I not been on a ridiculous ten-stage Senior Rover challenge, so my apologies if the obscure blue front garden I've uploaded to Flickr is yours.
My Senior Rover failed to open the ticket gates again. I was waved through both times. The code which flashed up on the gate was '07', which I looked up later and it means "magnetic code unreadable", suggesting the stripe on the back failed in the five minutes between Ockendon and Chafford Hundred. I think this means my gateline travails were atypical and a Senior Rover should normally work seamlessly.
West Horndon →
By this point I was a bit tired so merely hopped out onto the platform and hopped back in before heading home. Don't worry, I'll be returning to West Horndon as part of my One Stop Beyond feature (assuming I can find anything here to write about).
The opportunity has arisen to spaff your brand across the Waterloo & City line.
Bring your dosh, share your collateral, own the journey.
The Waterloo & City is by far the least used tube line, runs nigh empty for a lot of the day and closes at weekends. However it's also entirely self-contained and jam-packed with financial decision makers, so an elite captive audience will be forced to embrace your brand story on a daily basis. What's not to love?
To be clear you don't get to rename the line. TfL's commercial mavens would love to do that, prostituting their most iconic assets to the highest bidder, but instead killjoys embedded in reality always kick up a fuss at the thought of deliberately inconveniencing the travelling public.
Also the stations won't be changing their names because Waterloo and Bank are complex shared interchanges, so trains won't be running from Buxton Waterloo to Monzo Bank any time soon.
But substantial tangible assets remain for full-on brand takeover, from all the platforms and trains to all the experiential spaces (which is the posh name for every possible surface we can smother).
Imagine your company message on every wall and ceiling at Bank station, also scrolling across the electronic display, also embedded in every announcement, also emblazoned across incoming trains, perhaps also performed by singing dogs on digital screens if you choose the deluxe option. How much better it would be than the current fragmented mess where no cohesive narrative dominates and the most popular advert is for a Jeffrey Archer novel.
Please note that the Network South East branding on the edge of the platform will remain in place, so if you run a train company or if your corporate colours clash with blue and red this may not be the opportunity for you.
Please also note that the platforms are often much busier than this, indeed the majority of customer throughflow takes place at peak times in ridiculously cramped conditions, so any intricate subtle messaging may go entirely unnoticed.
A true prize in this takeover will be the opportunity to rebrand the interior of the trains. Passengers are often crammed in like cattle staring at the walls for six minutes at a time, so imagine the cut-through of your message on a twice-daily basis. Also don't underestimate the impact of reupholstering a bespoke moquette throughout the train. Nobody will see it during peak times because every patch of fabric will be arsed-over, but rest assured that influencers will descend en masse during quieter periods to share fawning reels of seating with a global audience.
One of the design assets up for grabs is the Waterloo & City line map itself. However don't get too excited - the line links just two stations so nobody ever bothers looking at it, thus any clever jiggerypokery your creative department comes up with will be entirely wasted. However slip us an extra £0.5m and we'll see if we can squeeze your company name onto the tube map, somewhere in the key, no questions asked.
Also this is nothing new. The travelator at Bank has long been a fully-stickered brand tunnel, replaced every few months by another financial company in need of wider visibility. Nobody who uses the line regularly will blink if another all-encompassing message appears instead, it's been their everyday experience for years.
Note that the current advertiser along the travelator is a spread-betting company, the vast majority of whose investors lose money, so hardly a force for good in the wider world. Meanwhile every panel inside the train carriages is presently monopolised by an app that leverages blockchain, so if you have an exploitative financial brand you might fit in perfectly as the new name here.
Also this is really nothing new. TfL rebranded an entire tube line last year as part of promotion for a new smartphone feature, earning £830,000 for a two week takeover. This limp splash has been the exemplar for tube line renaming in TfL's Commercial partnerships Opportunities catalogue since April 2024, so don't look all surprised when it's suddenly proposed to do this to the Waterloo & City.
Remember that every penny earned in sponsorship is ploughed back into London's transport system, which has often been used as a reason to do a lot more of this kind of thing. However it's worth remembering that a million quid is peanuts in the world of London transport, not even enough to keep the cheapest Superloop bus route on the road. Also a lot of the money effectively pays the salaries of TfL's commercial flunkeys who churn out brand-obsessedbolx and social media posts sprinkled with emojis, so is essentially wasted.
The partial rebranding of the Waterloo & City line could be an exciting and truly unique opportunity with the potential to blend synergies and supercharge brand awareness going forward. Alternatively it's a vulgar stain on what should be a passenger-focused public service, further damaging credibility and helping nobody except big business.
And if you do decide to go ahead with a bid, remember that smothering a few platforms with sloganed vinyl with isn't always the word of mouth success your planners hoped. Nobody recalls last year's rebrand of the Circle line, nor the underlying campaign, nor dashed out to buy a new phone as a result. Sponsor the Waterloo & City line and you may just end up pouring millions down the Drain.
They didn't have blogs or the internet forty years ago, indeed my Sinclair ZX81 wasn't capable of much, but here are 31 things I didn't digitally publish at the time. To help you get your bearings I was 20 and July was the start of the summer break between my second and third years at university. I apologise that I wasted the opportunity and did nothing of any interest whatsoever.
Mon 1: I'd arrived home from university yesterday so today I walked into Watford and signed on. I also dropped off one of Mum's films at Boots for developing, and dripped an ice lolly down my t-shirt on the walk home. Tue 2: Dad brought a copy of New Scientist home from work, also a copy of Time Out. New Scientist contained details of yesterday's leap second, while Time Out had some really intriguing small ads at the back. Wed 3: Walked down the road to see my grandmother. She showed me the scar on her leg and I made her some tea and watered the plants. As a reward she gave me £5 which I promptly spent on the new Scritti Politti album, Cupid & Psyche 85. Thu 4: My brother finished his A levels. I walked down to the butchers and we had mince for tea. The Liberals won the Brecon and Radnor byelection.
Fri 5: Took my Scritti Politti cassette back to Our Price because it had chewed up during the first play. The replacement cassette chewed up even worse. Sat 6: Scored 94 in Scrabble by playing EQUALITY. Sun 7: Mum and Dad went to Uncle Sid's Golden Wedding anniversary party, leaving my brother and I to attempt to cook lunch. The Yorkshire puddings were more successful than the lumpy gravy. Mon 8: Had to go into Watford twice, first to sign on, then six hours later to go to the dentist. I got £28.50 per week. No fillings. Tue 9: The new series of V wasn't as good as the first, especially now the aliens ate tarantulas rather than hamsters. Wed 10: My new Girobank cheque guarantee card had a hologram on it. Thu 11: Bought six Berol pens in Tames the stationers in Rickmansworth. Bumped into my old headmistress in Budgens (not in Bejam, I don't think she'd have lowered herself to shop there).
Fri 12: Today's TV included a) Television Scrabble on Channel 4 [Richard Stilgoe continued his winning streak] b) Swank on Channel 4 [a fashion show presented by Dawn French] c) Live Aid Preview on BBC2 [Noel Edmonds looked forward to tomorrow's concert] d) An Audience With Dame Edna Everage on ITV [she savaged David Steel, but nicely]. Sat 13: Watched Live Aid from Status Quo at noon to Paul McCartney at ten. Took advantage of the stereo headphones option. My college flatmates actually had tickets - I'd said no thanks. The Beach Boys looked very old. My diary says "Queen did a fab little set". Once the Philadelphia-only section started I gave up and switched over to watch The Stepford Wives instead, then set my alarm for the USA For Africa finale. Sun 14: My Dad and brother went to the athletics at Crystal Palace as guests of Kodak, so I was left with Mum to go round to my grandmother's for a non-roast chicken lunch. Mon 15: Watched our tortoise eat a heck of a lot of cucumber (40 years on, nothing's changed).
Tue 16: Dad rang from West Berlin where he'd flown for a conference. I'd given him 4 marks I had going spare before he caught the 724 this morning. Wed 17: Bobby Ewing died in a car crash in tonight's episode of Dallas, a death which would later prove to have been a dream when he walked out of the shower at the end of the next series. Thu 18: Tried loading up my Sinclair ZX81 with a game off cassette but it wouldn't work, so I typed in a worm-wriggling program instead. Fri 19: Watched the birds eating some stale chocolate sponge on the lawn. Dad was back from West Berlin with tales of life inside the wall. Sat 20: My brother went to see the Royal Tournament with a group from Youth Club, then came home in time to watch the Royal Tournament on BBC1. Sun 21: It being July, preparations for Sunday lunch always involved shucking the peas.
Mon 22: A young yellow-beaked bird smashed into my bedroom window and slumped dazed on the sill before flying off. Later we found it hopping around the lawn with its mother, learning how to be a proper bird. Tue 23: ITV were rerunning Fireball XL5 as one of their summer holiday morning shows and I was hooked. On Brookside it was the day of the incredibly unlikely nurses siege. Wed 24: Took my grandmother a loaf of bread and we sat in the garden while she told me stories of her time working in a glove factory. Thu 25: The latest unemployment figures were 3,235,036, and would have been one lower without me. Fri 26: My friend from Cheshire rang unexpectedly from Euston at 8am, could she come round? She'd been on a science course in London and was being spontaneous. If she was hoping for an exciting visit, what she got was a trip to the allotment, a roast pork dinner and a lot of watching TV.
Sat 27: Between us we were planning a 'Snowdonia spectacular' walking holiday in September so we used my typewriter to write up some notes. We needed an Ordnance Survey map of North Wales so drove to WH Smiths in Rickmansworth (no luck), but they did have the second Adrian Mole book so I bought that. Found the map in Watford instead. Sun 28: Finished the Adrian Mole book at 2am, lying on a mattress on the front room floor. My friend finally set off home from Watford Junction at 5pm and I got a peck on the cheek. I bet my parents got their hopes up there. Mon 29: Back to normal. Coco Pops for breakfast. Wrote up some lecture notes. It rained a lot. Tue 30: Mum had bought me some new clothes from her catalogue. I hated the pullover but thankfully it was the wrong size. They'd also sent the wrong jacket. I did however now have a blue check shirt and a cool pair of grey trousers. I loved the trousers. Wed 31: We've reached the last day of July and I hadn't been more than three miles from home all month. Looking back I can't believe how unadventurous my life was back then, but at the time I thought nothing of it.
Route 700: Colliers Wood to Phipps Bridge Estate
