33 things we learnt from TfL FoI requests in March 2026
1) Seven parts of the DLR network have their own names: North route (All Saints to Stratford), East route (Blackwall to Beckton), South route (Heron Quays to Lewisham), West route (Westferry to Bank & Tower Gateway), Central area (Poplar, West India Quay and Canary Wharf), London City Airport extension (West Silvertown to Woolwich Arsenal) and Stratford International extension (Canning Town to Stratford International). 2) Planning documents for the first tranche of Superloop routes have been made available, in case you'd like to know why they go where they go as often as they do. 3) If you have a 'DLR spotting book' and are wondering what happened to '4 Wheel Diesel Hydraulic Locomotives Numbered 5610 & 5611', there's no evidence that either ever existed.
4) The speed restriction between Charing Cross and Leicester Square on the Northern line is to reduce and mitigate against train shoebeam damage caused by track geometry from tunnels built over 100 years ago. The restriction will be removed when the situation improves. 5) In February TfL began a 12 month trial of video‑analytics technology at Stockwell, Clapham North, and Clapham Common focusing on counting people entering and exiting the gateline. This will strengthen understanding of fare‑evasion levels and help assess how enhanced data could support more effective deployment of enforcement officers across the network. 6) TfL don't know why there's a bollard at the junction of Furlong Road and Holloway Road because it was installed in November 2015 and they bin all documentation after 7 years.
7) The timetabled running time from Pimlico to Vauxhall is 65 seconds (but 68 seconds in the opposite direction) 8) In the last 12 months Tram Safety Officers have interacted with customers with regards to smoking/vaping on 146 occasions. No penalties were issued. 9) TfL fleecingtons (showerproof soft-shell jackets) have modal branding and are available in 10 sizes from XXS to 5XL. Before washing the zipper should be closed and the garment turned inside out. Fabric softener must not be used.
10) When the bus stop "Hume Way" was renamed "Highgrove Pool & Fitness Centre", it cost £328.12. 11) By undertaking further mileage running restrictions, the current DLR timetable can be sustained until at least the end of March 2026. TfL are exploring other options to extend this date. 12) The floor inside an Elizabeth line carriage is 1145mm above rail level. Overground trains are slightly higher (Class 378 1148mm) (Class 710 1155mm).
13) TfL awarded Stagecoach a £1,967,010 contract to operate the Silvertown Tunnel Cycle Shuttle for 3 years. Demand continues to be around 110-130 cycles on weekdays, lower at weekends. 14) In the month of February, only 8 passengers used a paper ticket to enter Chigwell station. By contrast 1567 passengers used Oyster and 1122 used contactless. 15) Mood lighting has been disabled on new buses "as we have been experiencing issues of these lights being used instead of the main lights".
16) 83 current TfL employees have been off work sick for more than 24 months since 2019. 40% of employees have been off work for 4 weeks or less during that period. 17) 156km of TfL roads have had a speed limit lowered under the Lowering Speed Limits programme. 18) Names proposed for Santander Cycles for International Women’s Day, but not used, include Amelia Jenks Bloomer, Kittie Knox, Rose Yates, Sylvia Pankhurst and Queen Marie of Romania.
19) Lost property found on buses last year included 15570 telephones, 11396 rucksacks, 9385 spectacles, 2915 umbrellas and 444 suitcases. 20) When making manual announcements on the Bakerloo line, the driver presses 1 for 'Let customers off the train first please', 2 for 'Please move right down inside the car', 3 for 'Please stand clear of the doors' and 4 for 'All change please, this train terminates here'. 21) The refurbishment of the toilets at Amersham station has been delayed by unforeseen asset issues in the male facility.
22) Last year 35,166,468 sales were recorded at London Underground ticket machines. The fewest sales were at Emerson Park with 6188. 23) The most popular journey on the Underground last year was again Bank to Waterloo with 1,315,723 taps. The reverse journey was made 1,268,090 times. 24) In last year's sole parakeet incident, the Traffic Signal Controller located on the A23 Purley Way/Commerce Way became heavily contaminated with bird guano, preventing engineers from safely accessing the unit. The contamination resulted from parakeets roosting in a privately owned plane tree situated above the controller.
25) Last year there were 15390 incidents of damage to TfL buses resulting from collisions and crashes, down from 15939 in 2024. 26) 701 candidates applied to the TfL General Management Graduate Scheme last year, of whom 272 passed the online tests, 36 attended interviews and 10 were appointed. 27) If you try to find out why the new Piccadilly line stock is late by asking "So, Hey TFL FOI Team, We Could Pick The Random Date From: Between: Dec 2026 To: June 2027, With The Drumroll, Please? Thanks", expect the response "TfL does not hold the requested information".
28) Last year 88 wigs were logged as lost property, 11 of which were returned to their owners. TfL have had no success returning two sets of false teeth, nor an urn containing ashes. 29) Fitting out Woolwich station for Crossrail cost £294,203,000. Additional Compliancy Works at Canary Wharf cost £122,414,000. 30) Members of the Royal Family do not receive free travel on TfL services, but 'Gold Level' athletes have been eligible for a free Athlete's Oyster Photocard since May 2006.
31) The borough whose residents received the most ULEZ penalty charges last year was Enfield (64,140), followed by Haringey (48,082) and Barking & Dagenham (42,356). 32) If you ever wanted to know precisely where all the 272 Labyrinth artworks are, here's a list. 33) When a suspicious muppet asked "I wish to fact check a series of articles published on the IanVisits website. I have tried looking all over your website and could not find the information. As the author of these articles does not provide sources or links to supporting documents, I believe this is potential fake news until verified", TfL responded by linking to the four supporting documents and confirming in each case that Ian was correct.
Sun 1: I have bought an air fryer. I am still getting used to how long it takes too cook things, trying to find the balance between undercooking the chicken breast and shrivelling the oven chips to a crisp. Mon 2: Vegetable of the day.
Tue 3: Scaffolding has goneup outside Bromley-by-Bow station, suggesting TfL are finally getting round to repairing the glass roundel smashed over two years ago. [n.b. as of 2nd April, no further action] Wed 4: Took BestMate on the Brockley Three Peaks walk and unexpectedly hit the emotional jackpot ("ooh this is where I was christened..." "they never had artisan cheese shops here in my day..." "hang on, this is where my grandparents are buried...") Thu 5: The reason why the quiz Counterpoint no longer has a studio audience was explained on Radio 4's Feedback. It's because "Counterpoint is recorded with all the contestants in the studio for production flexibility." It is now, anyway. Fri 6: There's a new tube station guessing game in town - Mind The Map. It names a station and you have to click in the right place on a geographical map, up to 272 times. It took ages but I managed to get to the top of the leader board before six other people overtook, generally thwarted by how long it takes to scroll the map, not my tube knowledge. Sat 7: I was very nearly thrown down the stairs on the number 32 bus because the driver braked unexpectedly, and thankfully I was holding on tightly enough but that could have been life-wrecking.
Sun 8: This month's dubious car numberplate is OH 61RTH (on a Mercedes in Seven Kings). This month's impressive numberplate is THE 60S (on a Mini in Hyde Park). Mon 9: I wasn't expecting my air fryer would keep setting off the smoke alarm (for no readily obvious reason). Tue 10: My Christmas-gift hyacinth is now shrivelling and I'm wondering, can I keep the bulb for next year, could I plant it in a pot outdoors or was it a one-off and I should just bin it? Wed 11: I received my TfL renewal email saying "You've now had your 60+ London Oyster photocard for a year". It confirmed that to continue using it I had to provide proof of a London address and pay a £18 address check fee. I tried, but the website refused to let me pay claiming the address on my payment card didn't match the address on my TfL account. I tried over 10 times, and the helpful bloke on the helpline tried two more, but no luck. In the end I had to wait 10 days for a letter to arrive and take it to the Post Office. Thu 12: I counted how many times Angela Scanlon looked down at her iPad during tonight's post-Apprentice recording of Unfinished Business and it was 51. This is one reason why visualised podcasts make dreadful TV. (Another is limp forced bonhomie, and maybe just kill the show off)
Fri 13: It feels like bad form to decorate the new electric charging station on Edgware Road with giant petrol pumps. Sat 14: I'm not usually a fan of What 3 Words, but I do like that Pine Walk Allotments in Bromley display their location on the gates as ///bought.dream.fork. Sun 15: In Bethnal Green a tall white truck attempted to drive under a railway viaduct, perhaps not realising that 11'6" only applied to the centre of the arch. I watched as fine particles showered from the brickwork, then more open-mouthed as the driver ignored the noise, ploughed on and ended up getting lodged under the bridge. There are so many scrape-lines in the ceiling that I guess this is a fairly regular occurrence. Mon 16: On the R8 to Biggin Hill, along some ridiculously narrow lanes, oncoming traffic is generally expected to manoeuvre out of the way of the bus. But our driver was almost scuppered by meeting the Bromley dustcart coming the other way. Fortunately we'd just reached the first decent passing place, otherwise a public-service stand-off could have ensued and we might still be stuck there.
Tue 17: The platforms at Berrylands are seriously shonky, skewwhiff and worryingly insubstantial, so I'm not surprised the station will be closing for four months from 11th May for a complete replacement. Wed 18: Today I blogged about my failed interview 40 years ago, and belated congratulations to the (just) one reader who correctly guessed in the comments who/what it was for. If you'd left an email address I'd have congratulated you directly. Thu 19: Hello to the woman who walked off a train a Baker Street without looking and hit me in the leg with her fold-up bicycle. Ouch. I may however have exaggerated my limp as I hobbled off. Fri 20: I enjoyed three hours of Comic Relief, or at least enough of it to make watching worthwhile. But I was amazed its viewing figures were only 2m this year, accelerating a longstanding downward trend (2025 2.6m, 2024 3.7m, 2023 2.9m, 2022 3.5m, 2021 4.5m, 2019 5.8m, 2017 6.3m, 2015 8.4m, 2013 10.3m). Sat 21: After five years with my 'new' electric cooker I switched from using the front right hob to the back left hob. I presumed they were identical but blimey back left heats up so much quicker, and if I'd experimented previously I could have had years of quicker dinners.
Sun 22: I went for a farewell walk along Footpath 47 at Barking Riverside, all along the waterfront as far as the section they haven't strimmed to death yet. It'll never be quite so undeveloped again. Mon 23 Supermarket update: The latest price shock is for a 500g pack of own-brand sultanas. Six months ago £1.05, start of the year £1.15, last week £1.29, this week £1.49. Tue 24: In the latest edition of Westcombe News, available in the SE3 area and online, I learned that the bee-specific count in Vanbrugh Pits is exceptionally high and that Sam Mendes has been filming for his quartet of Beatles movies outside 82 Beaconsfield Road. A cracking local focus. Wed 25: Back in January we mused on what might be the oldest year of establishment on the front of a London Tesco. I proposed it might be 'Bishopsgate Est 1988', today I spotted Whitton Est 1965', but the winner still appears to be 'Victoria Est 1960'.
Thu 26: Every year there's a 'leaf week' when trees collectively switch from bare branches to small green leaves and in 2026 I reckon this week is that week. It's definitely normally in April. Fri 27: London's longest business name may be Supermegahyperdupermarketmetroexpress, a tiny creative bazaar in a container outside North Acton station. Apparently it's only open on Fridays, but it wasn't. Sat 28: The latest daily word game I'm playing is Cadgy, where you try to make 20 words by picking one letter from each of five columns (and 40 words on Saturdays). Sun 29: The guest on Lev Parikian's Six Things podcast this month is Matt Brown from Londonist. His six things he really enjoys include Tube Station Smells, Parakeets, Wetherspoons Carpets, Wazzbaffles and... oooh, thanks Matt! Mon 30: If you use the Journey Planner at nationalrail.co.uk, it now opens your search in a new window and displays a list of local hotels, even if you're only going one stop from Hendon to Cricklewood. To avoid this abhorrent commercial hijack you have to untick the booking.com box before searching, and so much for a nationalised railway. Tue 31: Since 1st January I've ridden on 50% of London bus routes and been to 80% of tube stations, so I'm taking it slowly this year. Wed 1: No of course TfL aren't publishing new bus maps, the very idea of it. Check the date.
Unbelievably it's been 10 years since TfL last bothered to print a set of London bus maps. Ten whole years.
They used to be updated regularly, then came a 14 month hiatus from January 2015 to March 2016 and then they just stopped. No good reason was ever given, although saving money probably had a lot to do with it.
It's since become harder and harder to work out where buses go, at least for those of us who like to plan our own journeys rather than slavishly following an app. I still use the2016quadrantmaps when travelling around London, they're often invaluable, although the Central London bus map is now impractically inaccurate because so many subsequent changes have occurred.
So it's a joy to report that a new set of London bus maps has finally been published, a proper geographic suite, almost as if TfL have finally seen the error of their ways. I couldn't wait to grab some paper copies.
Physical and digital copies will be provided. Look out for them in bus stations and larger tube stations, while the full set will be available at Visitor Centres, the London Transport Museum and City Hall.
This time there are nine maps rather than five, that's one for each of the eight compass points plus one in the centre. A West End and City summary will appear on the reverse of each map.
The North East map, for example, covers buses from Chingford to Upminster and from Loughton to the Royal Docks. Heathrow appears on two maps but Crystal Palace, annoyingly, is split across three.
It's hoped that having nine maps rather than four means they'll be more useful for planning local journeys. It also allows areas to be shown at greater scale. However the fold-out maps are smaller in size than the previous incarnation, and also printed on thinner paper so may not survive several outings in your jacket pocket.
The front cover designs return to the theme of local attractions. The Central map has a fairly standard Westminster view, bus included, while North East heads to the Olympic Park and North West features Wembley Stadium. South London offers a quirkier pair of dinosaurs, North plumps for parakeets in Highgate Woods... and as for South West, well, we'll get to that.
The real surprise is what they think counts as a bus map these days. It's definitely not what we've been used to.
Don't expect to see a simple road map, it's now a lot more colourful. Don't expect to see a lot of place names, it's now all about interchange with stations. Don't expect the previous confusion with very small numbers, instead a different kind of confusion with big numbers. It's going to take some getting used to.
Previously route numbers were shown alongside the roads and you had to follow them across the map. Now the routes are shown as coloured lines and only numbered at the ends. Arguably it's much easier now to see where the buses go, but patently it's also harder to see what they are.
TfL have very much been following this philosophy of late, for example when producing maps for consultations. I've long thought this unhelpful, especially where several routes follow the same road, but here's that fundamental shift writ large. I mean, just look at the size of the key.
Colourblind passengers may find this particularly hard to get their heads around, if indeed they can use the new maps at all.
Also the edges of the maps now feel less helpful. Whereas previously the routes would go right up to the edge they now end with arrows, some distance away, and this may make gaining an overview harder than before. There also seems to have been somewhat of a cop out in the Purley area, sacrificing the southernmost tip of London to ensure greater clarity.
At least they've gone for dotted lines to make the Superloop stand out.
I am greatly reassured that TfL have finally seen sense and reintroduced London-wide bus maps with up-to-date information. Perhaps the absence of maps meant they no longer knew where their own buses went, making network management increasingly difficult! A fresh suite of public-facing maps thus helps them as well as us. It should also be simple to update the digital maps with revised information every time a bus route changes.
But we need to talk about the South West London map because that is an abomination, and I hope it doesn't set the tone for what's to come.
Uniquely amongst the suite of nine, the South West London map has been produced 'in conjunction with Gail's'. Not only does the bakery chain get a namecheck on the cover alongside a striking photograph of their Brentford store, but the Gail's logo also appears on the map itself. And this being southwest London there are a considerable number of them - I counted nineteen - all given undue prominence simply because the company paid to shoehorn their brand onto the map.
I'm reassured that so far only one map has been commercially sullied in this way. Maybe TfL's commercial team failed to find any relevant businesses for the other sections or maybe they're all in the pipeline, so god help us if Wetherspoons takes South East London or Greggs goes Central.
Whatever, it is a joy to finally have accurate and up-to-date bus maps again, ten years after some budget-focused bigwig decreed we could all do without and should trust an app instead. The full suite of nine should be going live at tfl.gov.uk/maps/bus later this morning, and do look out for physical copies of the maps as you travel around London.
As a special launch offer all bus drivers have been provided with copies of their local map today and will be able to dispense one if you ask, so be sure to request one as you board.
These maps are sure to make travelling around our capital easier, even if they take some getting used to. And they finally right a wrong created ten years ago when some high-minded official decided we no longer needed to know where any of London's buses go, indeed we've all been in the dark ever since.
For my next alphabetical visit to unsung suburbs we're off to Grove Park, not the well-known one in Lewisham but the less well-known one in Chiswick. Indeed if you head to Chiswick station, that's precisely where Grove Park is.
Modern Chiswick covers the inside of a double bend in the Thames between Brentford and Hammersmith. It once comprised a scattering of villages and a lot of fields and orchards, nobody being particularly keen to live on land that regularly flooded. But a couple of large houses broke the mould, most notably Palladian wonder Chiswick House but also Grove House, a Georgian mansion further to the southwest. It had extensive river-facing gardens once described as some of the finest in England, and its owners included Earl of Grantham and the Duke of Devonshire. Then came the railways, specifically the Hounslow loop which cut across the Thames from Barnes in 1849, adding a very lonely-looking station initially called Chiswick and Grove Park. This triggered the building of a hotel and some well-to-do housing, but not too much, thus most of the land to the south remains as playing fields of one kind or another. And it's still a really nice place to live.
It's hard to define Grove Park's boundaries so let's start at the station and wander around a bit. The southern side boasts an elegant shopping parade, brief enough to be imposing, and whose parking spaces were recently half-filled to create a nicer place to sit. Perhaps grab a frothy coffee from Café Grove, or else some paracetamol from Busby's, a pharmacy which flags its independence with a stripy awning. Across the road is the Old Station House, Grove Park's original hotel, whose upstairs rooms have just been transformed into luxury apartments and whose downstairs mayor may not reopen as a pub. If your cat's sick or you want the Co-op, try the even shorter parade opposite the London-bound platform.
The first housebuilders had little imagination when it came to street names, hence we have Grove Park Gardens, Grove Park Road and Grove Park Terrace. Other streets got named after the Duke of Devonshire, his wife, his son's title and a Yorkshire abbey they collectively owned. Grove Park Road still boasts several chunky Victorian villas, gracefully spaced, but its most characterful house is probably the vicarage at number 64. This is where the poet Dylan Thomas lived from 1938 to 1941, roughly coincident with the publication of his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, at least according to those who compiled the ChiswickWriters Trail. John Thaw and Sheila Hancock used to live at number 70 before they skedaddled to Wiltshire.
St Paul's Church was built from Kentish ragstone, has a pleasing symmetry and is topped by a teensy steeple and a fake belfry. The Duke funded it so that his new estate could become a parish in its own right, with other benefactors including Baroness Rothschild and the future Edward VII. I'm not sure if it's usually unlocked or whether I squeaked in while the weekly Coffee Club was clearing up, but I can confirm they have a wide range of jigsaws for sale by the rear pew at £5 a time. As for the super-streamlined Art Deco block opposite that's Hartington Court and it replaced the only other mansion to precede the railway. The even older Grove House was dismantled in 1928, some say to be shipped to America, and in its place are the dazzling white semis on Kinnaird Avenue.
It's quite hard to see the Thames in Grove Park because the waterfront was subject to a landgrab by the first wealthy homeowners. Walk far enough north and you reach the enchanting tidal riverside at Strand-on-the-Green, but that's one of Chiswick's original component villages so out of scope for a Grove Park post. I did however discover a permissive path alongside Redcliffe Gardens, a former missionary training college, which residents permit the public to walk down between 7am and dusk. At the far end eight steps lead down to a rock-strewn tidal strand, pleasingly exposed on my visit, but alas further access was along an absolute mudbath of a footpath so I decided to back off. That's private footpaths for you.
Grove Park Terrace is split by a rarity in residential London, a full-on level crossing. It's a fairly essential traffic connection hereabouts so uncloseable, and with Victorian houses on all sides entirely unbypassable too. But there is just room for a footbridge, which is just as well because Network Rail lower the barriers long before any train appears, indeed I watched three cyclists get so bored waiting that they headed off elsewhere. Closer to the station enough space was found for a proper viaduct, again funded by the benevolent Duke of Devonshire, which is just as well because without Grove Park Bridge TfL would never be able to send a bus here.
These days the Grove Park name also spreads north of the railway, and this is where the suburb's swishest row of shops can be found. Nominal proof comes courtesy of the Grove Park Deli, purveyors of Norbiton Fine Cheese, picnic quiches and balsamic olives. I can imagine Time Out running a gushing feature back in the day, also focusing on Nuka's Thai, Halo salon and the snug ambience of The Copper Cow. Checking the newspaper rack outside Budgens, they've reassuringly placed broadsheets on the top row, tabloids on the second and the Times Literary Supplement at the bottom. But this is probably as far as Grove Park goes because the church a tad closer to the A4 is St Michael Sutton Court, Little Sutton being another of the constituent villages from which Chiswick coalesced.
For leisure purposes, residents of Grove Park are fortunate to have the grounds of Chiswick House on their doorstep, with the Western Wilderness accessed up an alleyway from Staveley Road. But this street also has its place in history as the site of the first V2 bomb to land in London. The supersonic missile debuted without warning on the evening of Friday 8th September 1944, destroying eleven houses and leaving a crater 30 feet wide and 8 feet deep. Three people died; a toddler asleep in a cot in her front bedroom, her 68 year-old neighbour who ran three local sweet shops and an army engineer walking to the station to see his girlfriend. 60 years later a granite memorial was placed at the site, or rather squeezed into a gap beside an electricity sub-station because the actual landing spot was in the middle of the road, but it's none the less respectful for that.
Heading south Grove Park ends abruptly on the edge of Quintin Hogg Memorial Sports Ground, originally the playing fields for the Central London Polytechnic. Full marks to them for never replacing the original sign. Closer to the river Grove House's former ornamental lake has been repurposed as Chiswick Quay Marina, the nucleus of an exclusive nautical enclave. And if you continue to the far end of Hartington Road be sure to look out for the green gates by the traffic lights on the approach to Chiswick Bridge. The metal panels feature a hugely distracting plug for Dukes Meadows (Pay & Play - Golf, Tennis & Ski) and also a much smaller sign saying 'Ibis Cottage', this being the name of the incredibly famous property concealed down the drive. For this is the location of the Taskmaster House, Alex Horne's comedian-testing hideaway, which you have far more chance of seeing on Channel 4 than through the gates in real life.
I did however find a gap marginally wide enough to peek through and was thrilled to see that something challenging was underway. Two balloons were resting on pedestals in the driveway, one blue and one yellow, but the slit was really narrow so heaven knows what they were for. I did spot a couple of people wandering about, by the looks of them technicians rather than comedians, so most likely setting something up rather than filming. But look out for these coloured balloons when series 22 screens in the autumn, whatever task they were mastering, because the tip of Grove Park is much better known than you thought.
The UK has a serious housing deficit estimated to be in the region of 5 million unbuilt homes. That'll be why the government's recently advanced its new town strategy with plans including 15,000 new homes at Thamesmead Waterfront and 21,000 more at Crews Hill and Chase Park. But we also have a problem with tens of thousands of homes planned but never completed, especially near me where the Lower Lea Valley is awash with construction sites cleared but insufficiently built upon. To try to determine the extent of the problem locally I've been for a walk from West Ham to Pudding Mill Lane, increasingly perturbed by the extent of the unbuiltness.
Here's a very rough map with all the major planned redevelopment parcels coloured in.
Green for 'construction underway or complete' and yellow for 'nothing yet'.
In what follows I'm going to assume flats are a good thing, not sterile highrise neighbourhoods, because the more housing we build round here the less chance your local Green Belt has to be sacrificed.
1) Twelvetrees Park(aka West Ham Village) 3800 new homes planned, 750 built (26 acres, 85% of site empty)
This one sits immediately alongside West Ham station in an absolutely prime location, but also on the site of a former gasworks so hard land to remediate. Last year they finished the first wedge of flats overlooking the station, creating the illusion it's a lot more complete than it is, and also opened up two footbridges so the first residents can escape. A new station entrance is planned but thus far barely started because the contractor went bust, so even that's way behind schedule. If you cross for a peek you enter a brief canyon of public realm before descending alongside a tumbling water feature to a set of fountains that residents are advised not to play in. A small Sainsbury's has opened to cater for the captive audience but the staff looked seriously bored yesterday. Eventually there'll be an extensive linear park but so far they've only completed a a small scrappy triangle, beyond which is an expanse of delineated brownfield that'll be covered at a snail's pace. Proportionally speaking we're still at Twotrees, nowhere near Twelve. approved 2018, began 2021, first homes 2025, estimated completion 2040s
2) Bromley-by-Bow Gasworks 2150 new homes planned, none started (23 acres)
This is about as challenging as housebuilding gets, melding 2000 flats into the largest group of Victorian gasholders in Britain. The cluster of seven is readily seen from the train between West Ham and Bromley-by-Bow stations, and it's this excellent connectivity which has persuaded developers St William it's worth the expense of construction. They plan to build seven circular blocks of flats inside the existing ironwork, a bit like at Kings Cross, then add six more circular blocks to help get their moneysworth. One bombed gasholder becomes a central water feature while another will have its unique radial truss lifted to crown a 'innovative open air space'. Affordable housing barely gets a look in. Also it's all smoke and mirrors because each gasholder's cross-bracing has to be removed and then "re-erected with required alterations" so the flats can be built inside. It's an astonishing place, as I discovered when I was lucky enough to get a tour of the toxic brownfield in 2022. But it'll look incredibly different once the transformation's complete, which is absolutely no time soon, and thus far all that's appeared are a few diggers and some scaffolding. decommissioned 2010, plans approved 2024, construction begins 2027
In 20 years time you'll be able to walk from the back of Twelvetrees Park to the back of Bromley-by-Bow Gasworks, opening up a much-needed local connection. I had to walk the long way through the industrial estate instead, a diversion which enabled me to confirm that Poplar Riverside (2800 homes) remains 75% empty, Rivermark (530 homes) is mostly underway and Calico Wharf (800 homes) is a desolate void after its Chinese owners pulled out two years ago.
3) Bromley-by-Bow North 1200 new homes built, 50% of site untouched (20 acres)
This is a stripe of land tucked between the A12 and the River Lea, just south of the Bow Roundabout. It's been in developers' line of sight for ages, and I attended a consultation on future plans way back in 2009. However only one central chunk got the go-ahead, becoming a fortress of 219 flats in 2016. The triangular neck closest to the flyover was supposed to follow as the footprint to a residential skyscraper but that's never happened. In 2019 the railway's edge began its transformation into a 965-flat site called Leaside Lock, and this is finally nearing completion seven years later. But the land around Tesco has never even reached the planning permission stage, perhaps held back due to complex land ownership, and I for one am delighted about that. The intention was to build a lot of flats and a tiny replacement supermarket, disadvantaging thousands of existing residents, and I continue to pray that this gets left alone while developers focus on hundreds of nearby acres they've demolished already.
4) Sugar House Island 1200 new homes planned, 33% occupied (26 acres)
IKEA bought this site in 2012, a tongue of land between two of the Bow Back Rivers. They handed it on to another developer sharpish, the intention being to mix commercial space with semi-dense housing. Buildings along Stratford High Street were prioritised so they were mostly done by 2019, then the focus shifted to a residential stripe behind. Wander round and the neighbourhood feels quite substantial, so only if you exit the site and look across the river do you see quite how much remains unbuilt. By my calculations two-thirds of the site remains unconstructed and at this rate it'll end up being well over 20 years between initiation and completion. Nobody in the world of residential development, it seems, is capable of hurrying up a bit. approved 2012, began 2017, first homes 2020, estimated completion 2030s
5) East Quay 750 new homes planned, none started (3 acres)
This Leaside site, just north of the Bow Roundabout, could be the poster child for slow development. Half the site was razed by Crossrail. I attended the initial consultation event in 2018. The remaining oil silos were flattened in 2021 after developers London Square bought the land. Their plans included a 33-storey tower but this fell foul of post-Grenfell rules on double staircasing so had to be redesigned, at which point the project stalled and nothing whatsoever has happened since. The hoardings still say 'East Quay Coming Soon' but it totally isn't, red tape and finance have killed it, and if you visit the URL underneath you just get 'Error 404'. If anyone's living here before 2033 I'll be amazed.
And so we come to three post-Olympic developments where... not a sausage.
6) Pudding Mill 950 new homes planned, none started (13 acres)
Since being handed back after the Olympics not a single foundation has yet been built in Pudding Mill, only a handful of meanwhile uses. Chief amongst these is the Abba Arena, a world class attraction that squats on what will one day be Pudding Mill's highrise centre, but which currently has permission to remain until March 2031. The Snoozebox Hotel opposite is protected until 2028 so the only patch currently up for grabs is the expanse of empty hardstanding on Marshgate Lane which has been empty for years. The latestplanning documents suggest works might begin here in the autumn for completion in 2030, but that's already a 2-year slippage and will likely slip further. It's shocking that a key Olympic neighbourhood won't see a single resident until almost two decades after the closing ceremony. named 2011, plans approved 2023, first homes 2030?, estimated completion 2034
7) Bridgewater Triangle 575 new homes planned, none started (6 acres)
This is essentially Pudding Mill East, over on the other side of the Greenway. It's the development whose towers are due to overshadow the Manor Farm allotments, you may remember, so a bit further ahead in the planning schedule. I thought they'd started given the riverside footpath's been closed for a year but no, they're just doing embankment works to create a nicer walkway and the first ground-breaking's not due until June next year. So so slow. construction begins 2027, estimated completion 2031
8) Rick Roberts Way 750 new homes planned, none started (5 acres)
And finally, a tongue of land beside the Greenway which was used as a coach park in 2012. It's subsequently been used to sell used cars and currently supports a large Padel club, having always been at the end of the redevelopment queue. One end is due to become a secondary school and the other end housing, but unbelievably no progress has been made due to "the development agreement not being finalised with the preferred bidder in 2025". While the LLDC reviews "alternative delivery strategies" this site continues to be wasted, and for goodness sake how hard can it be to build some houses?
I know it's been a self-selected sample but even in this small patch of the Lower Lea Valley that's 12,000 homes which have been pencilled in but not yet built. Is it a planning system logjam, is it a lack of available construction companies, is it the financial squeeze, is it an excess of red tape, is it commercial reticence to flood the market, is it because private developers can only invest money from sales made, or is it just that building new homes is always a painfully slow process? Whatever, there are huge swathes of East London where everyone would like to build homes but nobody is, seemingly because it's too difficult. Perhaps we should stop bickering over which bits of countryside to plough up and focus instead on turbocharging construction on brownfield sites already agreed.
This is the timetable for the Silvertown Tunnel Cycle Shuttle bus, or SCS for short.
It runs every 12 minutes throughout the day, every day of the week. The first journey is at 0634 and the last at 2134. That's five buses an hour for 15 hours, or 76 journeys in total. And given the buses run in both directions, that's 152 crossings per day. I wonder how many bikes are using it.
We can see some data in a presentation given to the Silvertown Tunnel Implementation Group last month. They provided a graph showing daily shuttle usage across certain weeks last year. And as you can see, the number of bikes never once reached 152.
(It did exceed 152 in the first week the bus operated, with a maximum of 299 passengers on day 1, but in normal operation never that high again)
I therefore declare that the bus runs more often than the number of bikes who want to use it, which is insane. Put another way, the bus drivers are crossing the river more often than the cyclists.
It's very much the Mayor's prerogative to run a green-friendly bus to encourage cycling take-up, and still hugely cheaper than adding a cycle lane to the tunnel would have been. But the Silvertown Tunnel Cycle Shuttle Bus is an ABSOLUTE WASTE OF MONEY, regularly running empty for the benefit of a tiny number of Londoners, and there must be a better use for the £1,967,010 being squandered on it.
Friday's TfL press release, which limped very much below the media radar, was about improvements to the Mildmay line timetable.
It's unusual for an exhibition centre to fund extra train services, but that's because they're reopening fully after a lengthy transformation and want the publicity. Add more trains and people are more likely to come is the philosophy, which is especially true when you're opening 25 new bars and restaurants and want to be taken seriously as a prestige hospitality destination.
But it's not many trains, just three services in the morning peak and five in the evening peak. And they're only going five stops, not even as far as Willesden Junction.
Here's part of the new timetable, just published, jiggered about so you can hopefully see what's going on. (click to embiggen)
The extra shuttles have the green outline and start in May. All the other trains are in the existing timetable. The trains labelled 'SN' are hourly Southern trains running between East Croydon and Watford Junction.
The evening peak's current status quo is five Mildmay trains an hour plus one Southern train. The new shuttles will boost this by adding two trains an hour, cutting the gap between some trains from about 12 minutes to about six. That's very welcome extra capacity if you're used to cramming into a rush hour train. It does however come with a significant downside at Clapham Junction, which is that the extra trains run from a completely different platform.
Mildmay trains normally run from platform 1. But the extra trains are running from platform 17, which if you know Clapham Junction is way over on the other side of the station. Indeed platforms 1 and 17 are as far apart as you can get, accessed along a long squeezy subway or via a much longer footbridge. The smallprint in the press release thus reminds passengers "to allow up to 10 minutes to walk between platforms 1 and 17 at Clapham Junction", which pretty much wipes out all the benefits of running the extra trains.
Imagine turning up on platform 1, as normal, only to discover that the next train goes in six minutes from the other side of the station. You might reach platform 17 just in time for the doors to close, then have to trek back to platform 1 only for the doors to close there too. The switch doesn't really take 10 minutes but at rush hour you'd be hard pushed to do it quickly, so best not risk it, plus your average passenger won't even notice that the extra trains exist and will stay put anyway.
The extra trains are being funded by the consortium who acquired the Olympia complex in 2017 and will run for the next five years. But the three morning peak extras seem wasted because nobody wants to visit a luxury restaurant nexus at 8am, and the evening ones are a drop in the ocean running from an inconvenient platform. If they'd really wanted publicity then running a decent service on the District line to Kensington (Olympia) would have made a bigger splash, but operational difficulties alas make that a non-starter. It's clearly a lot better than nothing, but don't expect it'll genuinely help you reach 'London's newest entertainment destination'.
I was outside Alperton station in the week hoping to catch a bus to Wembley Central. How long will that take, I thought. So I checked.
According to the timetable the 297 gets there in 4 minutes, the 83 gets there in 6 minutes and the 483 gets there in 10 minutes. But all three buses follow exactly the same route stopping in exactly the same places, so the disparity is ridiculous.
I know these times are best guesses, and were originally described alongside as "off peak journey time in minutes". I know that different routes may have different loadings so it's possible there might be some variety here. But it is utterly ridiculous to suggest that one route should take more than twice as long as another, in this case a 6 minute difference, all on timetables freshly posted in the last six months.
And this is no unique occurrence, I've seen this kind of discrepancy across London. It seems there's no consistency in the production of these timestrips, no underlying model, just a bunch of backroom gibbons churning out numbers that sort-of look right. Obviously travel times will vary according to traffic conditions, but there's no excuse for giving three wildly different estimates for an identical journey.
(it took 6 minutes, by the way, in fairly decent conditions, so '4 minutes' looks ridiculously optimistic unless it's late at night and '10 minutes' is proper pessimistic assuming jammy cloggage)
In December 2024 the government announced that it intended to replace all England's two-tier systems with unitary authorities. There'd no longer be local councils AND county councils, just the one authority locally, mainly to save money. It was also suggested that the new authorities should have a population of at least half a million.
All affected councils were encouraged to come together to discuss what should replace them, then suggest proposals to the Secretary of State who would make the final decision. So let's see how that's going.
One council was way ahead of the game and that was SURREY. They submitted final plans in May last year, five months ahead of anyone else. The county council suggested a 2-authority split, supported by two of the existing boroughs. The other nine boroughs supported a 3-way split. The government responded in October by officially selecting the 2-authority option. That decision was made law three weeks ago through the Surrey (Structural Changes) Order 2026. And this means Surrey's existing district and county councils will be abolished on 1 April 2027 to be replaced by two new councils, West Surrey Council and East Surrey Council.
West Surrey: Guildford + Runnymede + Spelthorne + Surrey Heath + Waverley + Woking (population 685,000)
East Surrey: Elmbridge + Epsom and Ewell + Mole Valley + Reigate and Banstead + Tandridge (population 565,000)
Elections to the two new councils are taking place in May. Each will 'shadow' the existing authorities before taking over in 2027. No decision has yet been made on the seat of government for each new council. There has been a request from throwback obsessives to name the western authority "West Surrey and South Middlesex", this on the basis that Spelthorne was dragged screaming into Surrey in 1965. The Secretary of State has agreed to discuss the proposal, but will hopefully reject this ridiculously long name given 95% of the new authority was never in Middlesex.
Four further counties had their futures confirmed this week.
ESSEX will be moving to a five authority model in 2028. There had also been proposals for three authorities and for four, but these had less support. Thurrock and Rochford were the sole supporters of a 4-authority version, in both cases keen not to be lumped in with Basildon and Southend.
West Essex: Uttlesford + Harlow + Epping Forest (population 330,000)
North East Essex: Braintree + Colchester + Tendring (population 520,000)
Mid Essex: Brentwood + Chelmsford + Maldon (population 340,000)
South West Essex: Thurrock + Basildon (population 370,000)
South East Essex: Castle Point + Southend + Rochford (population 370,000)
The five councils are based around the key local centres of Harlow, Colchester, Chelmsford, Basildon and Southend. Each will have a population of around 350,000 apart from NE Essex which'll exceed half a million. Thurrock and Southend are already unitary authorities and will be absorbed into larger ones. Two of the new authorities are estuarine, three are coastal and three are London-adjacent. Havering remains firmly in the capital. All council names are indicative and subject to change.
SUFFOLK is going three-way. This one's messier.
Western Suffolk: West Suffolk + parts of Babergh + parts of Mid Suffolk
Central and Eastern Suffolk: East Suffolk + parts of Mid Suffolk
Ipswich and South Suffolk: Ipswich + parts of Babergh + parts of East Suffolk
The intention is to coalesce around Bury St Edmunds, Ipswich and Lowestoft although detailed boundaries are still to be finalised. It's thus not possible to give precise populations but each will have approximately 250,000 residents (rather fewer than Essex or Surrey). The 3-way split was the preferred option for all six existing borough councils, but not the county council which wanted one county-wide unitary instead. Well of course they did.
West Norfolk: Breckland + King’s Lynn + West Norfolk + a bit of South Norfolk (population 300,000)
Greater Norwich: Norwich + parts of Broadland + parts of South Norfolk (population 280,000)
East Norfolk: Great Yarmouth + North Norfolk + parts of Broadland + parts of South Norfolk (population 330,000)
Norwich's boundaries will expand to take in surrounding suburbs and towns, a move that's long overdue. The rest of the county will be split west/east, probably administered from King's Lynn and Great Yarmouth. East Norfolk is a strategically unhelpful shape and feels very much like the leftovers. All three authorities have a similar population, well below the half million minimum the government originally proposed. This is apparently deliberate, creating similar structures across Norfolk and Suffolk to fit the devolution footprint of their future strategic authority.
As for HAMPSHIRE, this complex coastal county will shift from 14 authorities to just five.
North Hampshire: Basingstoke + Hart + Rushmoor (population 410,000)
Mid Hampshire: New Forest + Test Valley + Winchester + East Hampshire (population 480,000)
South West Hampshire: Southampton + Eastleigh (population 510,000)
South East Hampshire: Portsmouth + Havant + Gosport + Fareham (population 580,000)
Isle of Wight (population 150,000)
This reorganisation will also include boundary changes designed to strip Mid Hampshire of several city suburbs. SW Hampshire thus gains seven parishes around Southampton Water and SE Hampshire gains four parishes north of Havant. Again expect name changes before the new authorities go live, given SW Hampshire is essentially Southampton and SE Hampshire is essentially Portsmouth. Also North Hampshire contracts to North Hants which is very nearly the name of a completely different county, so I bet that gets changed. The Isle of Wight gets the rare luxury of being left unaltered.
Fifteen counties haven't yet had their administrative futures confirmed. Chief amongst these is SUSSEX where the Secretary of State announcedthis week he wasn't quite convinced by any of the proposed options. Instead he'll be starting a further technical consultation wherein Brighton & Hove expands from its current footprint and Chichester switches sides. If this goes through there'd then be four authorities: an enlarged Brighton & Hove, a coastal strip from Littlehampton to Shoreham, the rest of West Sussex and the rest of East Sussex.
Number of people who've travelled more than 1000 miles from planet Earth
