Rivercourt LTN council information

In the six months since the temporary Rivercourt Road LTN was put in place, we’ve received messages nearly every week – vanishingly few positive – and it’s still regularly our most read article on the website.  Messages fall into the following categories, with more than one correspondent questioning legality:

• Implementation problems:
  • I’ve received a fine, I don’t know why.
  • The signage / wording is poor – I had no idea I wasn’t supposed to go down there.
  • I paid for a visitor by RingGo who still got fined.
  • I witnessed someone reversing into the A4 – the ‘turning circle’ is dangerous – or – I witnessed an accident caused by someone slowing down/stopping to read the signs and being hit from behind, creating a multi-vehicle shunt – example images below.
• The LTN is damaging my business, I’m leaving the borough.

Rivercourt crash front

Rivercourt crash rear-end

The “local access only” wording and cacophony of messy signage is considered deceptive by many correspondents – this and many of the other are points were raised in our original article.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that when challenged on a PCN fine, the council may back down, rather than attend a tribunal, however there’s rather more to this story, when considered in the light of the recent High Court case.

The West Dulwich case

Last month, the legality of the way in which an LTN was implemented by Lambeth Council in West Dulwich was tested in the High Court, and found to be unlawful.  It wasn’t the legalities of the LTN itself, but the poor way in which consultation was carried out, and the way in which the council failed to take due consideration of well researched and detailed evidence provided by local people in a 53-page submission.

The judgment demonstrates that councils cannot treat public engagement as a mere procedural formality, particularly when introducing potentially divisive schemes such as LTNs, even when using Experimental Traffic Orders (ETOs), they must genuinely consider such submissions. Furthermore, the ruling challenges any possible “council knows best” culture – the description of a council officer’s report being “masterclass in selective partial reporting”.

Our AI summary of the court’s 34-page judgement is provided below; there has also been significant coverage in the press. While LBHF still refuses to refer to these restrictions as “LTN’s”, the judge had no such qualms.

Not only are we interested in the specifics of this case, and it’s relevance to the Rivercourt Road LTN, but also in the more general points raised about failure of public bodies to consult fairly in general, taking heed of what residents say, especially when detailed and highly relevant. As the judge says, the test is whether something has gone “clearly and radically wrong”. The fact that the LTN was created by an ETO, appears to be no defence.

Rivercourt Road received a very limited consultation involving only a handful of the road’s residents, missing the large number affected (4000 a day according to the council), with a consultation seemingly much less detailed than the various ones ruled inadequate in West Dulwich, leaving Rivercourt also open to challenge.

It will come as no surprise that we’ve become concerned about the increasing number of high-handed actions of public bodies, including Mayoral overreach, overriding local people – and in some cases councils – often in planning decisions – but more recently in policies covering whole areas. The most obvious example of this is Oxford Street, which seems to have has been taken out of Westminster’s hands.

The 2011 Localism Act was supposed to address such issues, yet the Planning and Infrastructure Bill currently being debated in Parliament proposes to further limit the public’s say on the specious premise that ‘planning is the problem’.  According to the ONS to Dec 2024, in LBHF, 92% of planning applications are approved and 98% of those sail through under the ‘delegated authority’ of planning officers. There must surely be better things for government to do?

AI summary of High Court Judgement

Images from Design & Access statement for 2025/00389/FUL

We’re pleased to note that yesterday, LBHF and RBKC simultaneously approved the proposed pedestrian and cycle underpass underneath the Overground (Mildmay Line), linking the Imperial White City North Campus to North Kensington’s Latimer Road.  Modelled on continental schemes by Dutch architects West 8 of Rotterdam, the D&A statement includes images from several similar schemes – reproduced here – including those seen in Amsterdam and Rotterdam.  This begs the question – could TfL replicate this at the opposite end of what was once “The world’s shortest motorway” – the West Cross Route – just 1km south ?

The approved scheme is part of a Section 106 commitment made by Imperial as part of their scheme at the White City North Campus in 2013. We advertised and attended an exhibition of the proposals last September in Wood Lane, and it was approved by the councils at simultaneous planning meetings on 10th June.

The images speak for themselves, the only significant issue appearing to be how to keep pedestrians safe from any ‘turbocharged’ e-bikes that are likely to appear: the RBKC committee agreed to a 6 month safety review. Mopeds and other officially recognised motorbikes won’t be allowed, and CCTV is in the design to ensure that the council’s LET team and Imperial will be able to monitor transgressors. Affiliate St. Quintin and Woodlands Neighbourhood Forum has a longer report with more of the history of the scheme.

Holland Park Roundabout

HPR TfL proposal

Last year TfL presented a proposal for Holland Park Roundabout (HPR). It provides an additional cycleway, but removes a lane of Holland Park Avenue (HPA), routing bikes around the Thames Water Tower on the inside of the roundabout, and across the 3 lanes lanes of traffic, making it a maximum of 8 lanes wide, as shown, requiring additional junctions, and additional signals.

The roundabout currently provides cycle and pedestrian routes north and south: the relevance to this story is that the existing northern underpass, under the pedestrian surface crossing at the southern end of the West Cross Route, bears more than a passing resemblance the scheme just approved 1km north. It could provide a lower cost, very much simpler, safe and ready-made solution.

HP underpass 2

HP underpass 1

HP underpass 3

HP underpass 4 (with sheep)

Those writing to us have expressed concerns over the likelihood of further delays to the many already congested buses at Shepherds Bush Green, and down HPA – seriously congested in rush hours – plus the scheme’s apparent unnecessary cost, complexity and added dangers. The proposal creates additional junctions where the 8 bus routes, numbered 31, 94, 148, 228, 49, C1, 295, and 316 cross to Shepherds Bush bus station / Westfield, through which it’s proposed to drive a bidirectional cycle lane.  The well-established statistic is that 80% of accidents happen at junctions. 

TfL also suggests there would be some local traffic displacement, which, with Shepherds Bush residents already significantly affected by Westfield, would present further problems.  Independent traffic analysis using industry standard models – incorporating the loss of one lane on HPA – shows that the scheme would greatly increase congestion, supporting our correspondents’ concerns.

Telegraph HPR – click for/video

A video report in last weekend’s Telegraph shows that a number are significantly adding to their own risks by running the poorly timed lights at the bottom of HPA.

TfL suggests that HPR is high on their list of London’s most dangerous junctions – the main reason for the scheme. Local campaign group SOS dispute the accident figures by a large factor – TfL claim 54 accidents in the 3 years to May 2023, but SOS’s detailed analysis from public records only shows one slight accident involving a cyclist, and no pedestrian incidents at all – despite the above activity. TfL cast a wide net over the area including much of Shepherds Bush Green and the junctions close by to create their ‘HPR danger’ narrative. The London Cycling Campaign has campaigned in support of the proposal, but does not include the roundabout in it’s list of top 20 dangerous junctions.

Save our streets leaflet (click to view)

SOS are highlighting the dangers of the proposed additional junctions, their analysis of TfL’s own consultation data obtained under FOI, suggesting that only 12% of residents and 30% of cyclists support the scheme.  Many currently eschew the existing infrastructure altogether (paths and crossings), and use the road – as is – as the video shows.

Empress State Building (+Earls Court 2)
[photo: Wikipedia]

Hammersmith has several tall buildings, the latest being 181 Talgarth road, but perhaps the most iconic is 1961’s Empress State (31 Storeys) next to Earls Court. There are more in the pipeline, particularly on our borders. Six years ago, we wrote about the increasing fashion for rather less iconic hi-rises, then referring to what we now call the Ziggurat (35 storeys), Centre House (32 storeys, now largely complete opposite TV Centre on Wood Lane), and the prospect of what was being planned at North Acton, in an “almost continuous string of high-rise developments from NW10 to W12”.

We’re not there – yet – but unknown at the time were the remaining details around Imperial White City and White City Living,  227 Wood Lane, Earls Court – now proposing to build upwards to 42 storeys – and a 29 storey tower, 100 Kensington starting to loom over Tesco at 100 West Cromwell Road next door, and of course along the way, 181 Talgarth road.  Wandsworth recently rejected Terry Farrell’s 29-storey tower on the south side of Battersea Bridge, perhaps suggesting that the recent article by Sir Simon Jenkins has been read London was a city of streets; now it’s a city of towers

Michael Bach of the London Forum recently noted that according to the NLA annual tall buildings report, the pipeline for London’s tall buildings numbers nearly 600 – equivalent to a 20-year supply – based on the completion rate of the last 10 years.

The GLA, London Plan and Tall Buildings Report

Do tall buildings work?

Tall buildings have become the consistent hallmark of Mayoral Opportunity Areas since Ken Livingstone’s days, detailed in our recent Planning System article, more recently favoured by the student accommodation sector (PBSA), notably at North Acton, but also from White City to Nine Elms, and farther afield, remembering that Earls Court is also an opportunity area.  This has led to the recent GLA investigation, and last month’s publication of their Tall Buildings Report. Far from extolling the virtues of tall buildings, important questions are now being asked about the cost (both rent/purchase, and long term, including to the environment), suitability for the people housed in them, particularly families, quality of construction, and of course whether they are actually addressing the ‘housing crisis’.

In the run up to the next London Plan due in 2026-7, the Mayor’s “Towards a New London Plan” document and consultation suggests that his dissatisfaction is that some boroughs haven’t clearly identified tall building locations, and may mandate new rules for tall building clusters, including a minimum height benchmark for small sites, with potentially lower maximum heights near the river. Any clarification would be welcome.  While there’s a welcome proposal to reduce duplication with the NPPF and other policies, and sensitivities around Tall Buildings are recognised, there are a lot of options being tabled here, which might suggest a lack of confidence and/or strategic direction. The public consultation is open until 22 June.

The developer’s argument is often straightforward – it creates more housing on less land, and is more viable. One of the spanners in the works has been the requirement for two staircases post-Grenfell, reducing floor sizes, so putting yet more pressure on heights. There’s also the potential for an insidious side-effect of Mayoral the call-in process, regularly used to approve such designs often against local opposition, and councils (current examples being a 46 storey PBSA tower in Canary Wharf, and a 27 storey PBSA tower at Archway) – the typical step-and-repeat, so called spreadsheet architecture means that developers can easily stretch the tower upwards to meet the demand for a minimum 35% affordable, or until an agreed figure is reached, with almost no design effort at all.  Then they can blame the Mayor.

Last year, the London Forum reported that London is “on course to have the most crowded skyline in Europe“, following a Policy Exchange report that says ‘mania’ for high rise development has damaged UK cities’ and that far from helping the housing crisis,  ‘tall buildings have in fact “made it worse”’. In one memorable week, around half the stories in our Hammersmith Weekly email were about hi-rises, with recent stories around Westfield Living confirming many of the issues. 

Whatever the truth of the claims and counter-claims, in the twenty years of London Plans, coincident with the drive upwards (that was supposed to address the problem), the housing situation has turned from a problem to a “crisis”, and some of the original towers are already being demolished for yet taller ones, before questioning whether they are part of the solution, or part of the problem.

Nomination for a Nancye Goulden Award, 2025.

Bradmore Square is a small space tucked away behind Bradmore House on the Broadway, with which we and the Historic Buildings Group have a long history. The back entrance to Hammersmith tube and bus station, and the increasingly popular Broadway shopping centre is conveniently adjacent.  Recently the public realm has been noticeably improved.

Bradmore Square 3

Bradmore Square 2

Bradmore Square 1

The nomination notes that “it’s additionally impressive that the pots continue to be green and watered, even throughout the dry weather that we have been having”.

Mogden sewage works [photo : eight2O]

With the recent boat races having brought with them the annual hand-wringing over river pollution, providing the Mayor with an opportunity to remind us of his 2024 pledge to make London’s rivers swimmable within 10 years, it seems an appropriate moment to review the status quo in this long running saga.

In addition to the annual boat race related news, there have been a number of stories in the wake of the recent Thames Water TV documentary and the related Tideway Tunnel or ‘Super Sewer’ completion, after more than a decade of construction.  The programme revealed a team of people battling the odds to keep an overstretched system working, and not always winning. It must be disappointing for those working on the project to have so much of the news created by the things they were working for years to fix.

There’s the small matter of the automatic outfall monitors now mandated by OFWAT which, connected directly to Twitter, became an effective way to allow the public to beat the water companies with their opprobrium.  It may be that there were plenty of spills before these monitors, but that nobody could put a number on them, and the increasing heavy rainfall episodes have clearly not helped.

Original Super Sewer plans

Notwithstanding the connection to the Super Sewer at Hammersmith under the watchful eye of our own Capability Brown, and at Fulham on Carnwath road, there have been quite a range of related stories that help illustrate the causes, effects and work being done – or not – to address them, here’s a roundup:

Nomination for a Nancye Goulden Award, 2025.

The replacement of the bus lane in King Street by a temporary cycle lane during the pandemic was not without it’s critics, including in this parish, given its impact on public transport – particularly with the problematic ‘floating bus stops’ pictured, plus the effect on the public realm – two of our top concerns.

But the recent creation of two rain gardens, together with gravel replacements for a significant number of tree pits on both sides of the western end of the street represent very significant improvements. The hard landscaping and tree pits were done by Conway under the council’s mandate, paid for by the Green Investment Scheme, but interestingly, the planting was undertaken by HCGA under contract to the council, partly by local volunteers.

King St rain gardens

King St rain gardens

King St rain gardens

The gardens are already maturing after only a few weeks and will surely only get better in time. The adjacent gravel tree pits are a perfect example of what the society has campaigned on for well over a decade, awarding wooden spoons to the council in successive years for failing to improve the ‘asphalt situation’ around the borough’s trees. It didn’t seem to take Conway very long to dig out the old asphalt in around a dozen pits, and replace it with permeable and attractive real gravel. These represent what we’d like to see by default everywhere – of course in creative cooperation with guerrilla gardeners such as the award-winning Askew in Bloom, and The Green Project where they’re planting too. 

Olympia 2nd February 2025

Olympia 2nd February 2025

Olympia entrance

Olympia Hyatt Hotel

Conference Centre entrance

Olympia Music Venue

Music Venue looking towards stage

Olympia Theatre – looking towards proscenium

Olympia Offices

Glass canopy: restaurants, looking East

The Olympia project is approaching completion after over seven years of planning and construction, and has been holding ‘sneak peeks’ for locals to see in and around selected parts of the building in recent weeks. We were fortunate enough to join one of these tours.   As has been fairly longstanding policy, no independent photos were allowed, but a set of Olympia’s own photos were provided instead. We saw many of the views shown here.

The scale of the whole development is immense as we’ve said before – remembering that we didn’t go anywhere near the existing (open) parts of the site – the main exhibition halls, areas such as the Pillar Hall, or the Maclise road car park – AKA Hyatt hotel and school, or indeed the Hotel being built above the Hammersmith Road frontage.

The most complete part of the building that is not yet open is the music venue, billed as The Olympia Music Hall , cleaned and ready for imminent fit-out by the tenant AEG – the same organisation that runs the existing O2 Arena in Greenwich. The capacity is in excess of 4000, slightly more than the Hammersmith Apollo, but the number here is an ‘all standing’ one with a relatively small gallery and VIP area – shown with a couple of people standing in it in the photo looking towards the stage. The equivalent ‘standing’ for the Apollo is 5300.

By contrast, the 1500-capacity theatre is the least well advanced of all the areas, though right next to the music venue, simply because it was started last in the programme, and had to be built entirely from the ground up. Photos show the underside of the raked seating structure (in white), and the size and substantial height of the backstage area can clearly be seen. In fact so cavernous is the backstage area, that they unusually plan to build a couple of floors of office/theatre administration on top of the fly-tower. There’s an orchestra pit provided for this conventional proscenium-style auditorium, allowing for musicals. When the shell/core construction is complete, this will be fitted out by well-known CharcoalBlue consultants, for the selected operator Trafalgar Entertainment.

Interlinking the back of these venues, and the offices / conference centre is a substantial open elevated walkway, the size of a road, which sits above and between the two existing exhibition halls, and leads to the glass canopy restaurants (pictured), and then eventually to the large stairs and escalators down to Olympia Way and the railway. There was some discussion about a huge video wall – or rather video ceiling – along this walkway, which given the contrast between the open Eastern end, and the somewhat subterranean feel to the other end, will be welcome. The glass canopy area is open, and the part-covered roofs of the restaurants are also planned to be used for further hospitality, though a number of us, on a cold February morning tour, felt that here, optimism had triumphed over the realities of the British weather.

Olympia Sneak Peek

We had the opportunity to see an office floorplate (pictured above), which was as unremarkable as office floorplates typically are, apart from it’s size and the vista from it’s windows and balcony, on which were also able to stand. There’s a excellent uninterrupted view all the way across to Crystal Palace and the South Downs, via Earls Court’s Empress State Building from these private (for the office’s use) balconies, which will surely be a big pull factor.

Andy Slaughter MP at HACAN AGM 2025

We attended the HACAN AGM at the Irish Cultural Centre last week where our MP Andy Slaughter was guest speaker. Those attending our 2023 AGM will also recall mention of the third runway in his speech, but only in passing. It has of course never left Heathrow’s agenda, though it must have come as a surprise that this government, with its green ambitions, would put Heathrow expansion on its to-do list quite so quickly. 

Andy was bold enough to suggest that Heathrow expansion may have been swept up as part of an overall positive economic growth agenda, and might be as easily dropped should it fail the government’s tests for noise, air quality, carbon and economics. That’s the straightforward narrative, but not the whole story. There may be rather more to it, as HACAN clearly outlined.

There was much incredulity in the audience as to how the various tests might be, or have now been met, with or without the magic ingredient of 2030’s proposed 10% Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) rising to 20% in 2040, and indeed Andy suggested that the proof will lie in the proposals that Heathrow bring forward later this year.  It’s no secret that he has long been an objector. together with many civic and other societies blighted under the flight path, and potential paths, such as ourselves.  As we’ve reported, the chair of parliament’s Transport Committee is now Ruth Cadbury MP, another noted local opponent. Her committee is examining this proposal.

Better Plan making – an engineered view
Click on the image to open the pdf

Under the banner ‘Taking a View’,  from time to time, we’re pleased to publish articles by members on a subject of their choice, which they believe will be interesting to the wider membership.

With both the London Plan and Hammersmith’s Local Plan due to be rewritten shortly, and with all the noise being made about ‘The Planning System’ in recent months, here, our Chairman takes an engineered view. How can we write better planning documents to improve the ‘planning system’ ?

With the help of established methods, perhaps a dash of modern AI, this piece shows how plans can be substantially shorter and more precise, illustrated with a couple examples from the London Plan, and in a specific case, how loose wording is being taken advantage of at Earls Court.

If you have an article you would like to be considered, please contact .
Articles are unedited personal viewpoints, and may not always represent the views of the Society

The planning system has become the whipping boy of our new government, blamed for many of the country’s economic ills. The government wants to to ‘cut red tape to speed up growth’, and with the right tapes cut, that could definitely help.  There can be no doubt that in some cases planning applications are frustrated (in the legal sense), when objections are piled up, and the usual suspects marked down as NIMBY. But nationally there’s been a ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ for over a decade in the NPPF, and it’s even less of an issue in dense urban areas such as London because of the additional regional level represented by the Mayor’s London Plan.

Plan hierarchy

In this article, we dare to suggest that many of the problems lie closer to government, where the ‘red tape’ appears strongest, with recent announcements suggesting that they may have realised. A background can be found in A Brief History of Bureaucracy, while remembering that Einstein said ‘Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work’.

With the London Mayoral prerogative automatically mandated for projects of any size, supported by the option of call-in,  plus the largely unaffordable cost of (legal) challenge, there are actually vanishingly few opportunities for NIMBYs to stop a development blessed by the Mayor.  In extremis, this leads to Mayoral Opportunity Area developments like Nine Elms, Stratford, North Acton or indeed more locally, White City, where planning controls are more lax, especially on tall buildings, and locals haven’t been much considered. Earls Court is the next such Opportunity Area to be developed, and one in which we’re been actively engaged with several neighbouring societies.

Nine elms

Stratford (GLA)

White City Living

White City 2021

North Acton OPDC

Earls Court phase 1 proposed

A thoroughly unscientific review of preferences expressed on our Instagram feed over the last five years shows what real people like, and it’s not the images shown here, it’s rather closer to the CreateStreets or new urbanism view of the world, to the possible chagrin of some (male) architects.

Despite the government’s belief, with the NIMBY option already unavailable where housing demand is greatest, lining the barricades won’t work as a way to contest a poorly thought-through development.  But to improve them, we can and do suggest to developers, planners, local and Mayoral administrations, that they should be using the enormous accrued experience and skills freely available across the civic movement – help they claim to desperately need – and are required to properly consider under the 2011 Localism Act.