London
The latest stories from independent london media.
Lime axes speed limits for Deliveroo riders
Plus: How to end the tube strikes • Did a London school really ban ham sandwiches? • Who's reclaiming lost sex toys from TfL? • Was a Waymo really lost on Waterloo Bridge?
Lewis Baston: Labour wins well in Lambeth by-election, but Greens haven’t gone away
While London’s political attention was focused on the parliamentary by-election in Holborn & St Pancras, south of the river another contest between Labour and the Greens was taking place in Lambeth’s Myatt’s Fields ward.
“The killing of Harry Webb wasn’t just another statistic”: London’s gas-and-drive crisis
Plus: What will pedestrianised Oxford Street look like? • Where in London are the Greens targeting next? • Phone theft decline is a central London thing
Richard Derecki: Will Kensington & Chelsea’s innovative plan to help its homeless work?
In June 2025, the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea (RBKC) announced a plan for better supporting at least some of the nearly 2,000 homeless households for which it has responsibility.
How London flats are marketed in China
Chinese buyers of London homes say they feel like “chives” • Bafflement at Londoners’ love of old homes built during the “Qing dynasty” • Fascination with the enigma of the British electrician
Charles Wright: Will Heathrow expansion happen?
The Prime Minister’s suggestion that Heathrow airport’s expansion is “primarily a matter for London and Londoners” has put a serious question mark over the future of the £33 billion third runway project, just as its proponents were daring to hope that final consent for the…
Dave Hill: Five facts London’s Conservatives need to face
The Conservatives have chosen their shortlist of three potential candidates to run for Mayor of London in 2028. They are Festus Akinbusoye, James Cleverly and Sara Gezdari. Over the weekend a “selection council” discarded Alex Challoner, the fourth person on the longlist.
Julie Hamill: The three saviours of Plaza Camden
As recently reported, Camden Parkway’s former Odeon cinema is to get its last chance to shine as an entertainment hub, re-launched as the Plaza Camden thanks to a trio of cultural crusaders.
While you were asleep, Oxford Street was pedestrianised
Photo essay: We spent the night with the team making it happen • The last bus is packed • The taxi drivers don’t know • The pedicabs don’t care
The Instagram and TikTok harassment loophole leaving London women exposed
Content creators are racking up views filming women on the streets of London • The women say it feels like harassment • The police say it’s not illegal • Video platforms are slow to act
Budget 2026: What’s it really going to do for London? And when by?
Sadiq Khan has expressed delight with John Healey’s work and hailed a “new devolution revolution at its heart”, but other responses have been less glowing.
Prince Charles Cinema saved
Plus: Angel tube station faces temporary closure • Would you live in a railway arch? • We take our dodgy shops campaign to parliament • Palantir on top • Sin bin for cyclists
London’s mayor gets actual powers
Bakerloo line extension, more money, and an incentive to battle dodgy shops – what the budget means for London
Russell Curtis: The London Plan and the challenges of Green Belt building
The Green Belt is the Marmite of planning policy. For some, the very idea of building homes on the verdant fringes of towns and cities propels them into paroxysms of rage.
Richard Brown: When London’s ‘Big Bang’ came
The Big Bang, a package of London Stock Exchange reforms that was implemented 40 years ago today, got off to a stuttering start. SEAQ, the system which shared real-time price information on computer screens, collapsed under the weight of data requests within minutes of markets…
Dave Hill: Will Oxford Street’s pedestrianisation work?
The glamorous midsection of Oxford Street has become “traffic-free”, the first stage in a long march towards a pedestrianised transformation that won’t even begin to take its completed form until next year. Will the final destination live up to the expectations? I hope so.
Holborn & St Pancras by-election: Something for everyone, but not much for some
The electoral maths of the Holborn & St Pancras parliamentary constituency are pretty simple. In July 2024, it was won by the Labour incumbent by a comfortable margin.
John Vane: Water in Majorca
Born in Kensington in October 1958, Sylvestra Le Touzel has had a varied, distinguished and generally pretty amazing career as an actor since she was a ten-year-old child. She’s appeared in everything from Dixon of Dock Green (1968) to Pygmalion (2023).
The Zone 2 arms factory
Plus: How many Lime bikes are there in London? • Is there a conker shortage? • Do you want to live in a London observatory? • Name the new Overground line
DOLLY: A play about sexual assault and its devastating, sometimes ludicrous, aftermath
Six years ago, it was brought home to me how incredibly difficult, damaging and glacially slow it is for an allegation of rape to lead even to a criminal charge in the capital, let alone a criminal conviction.
Clapham viral chaos: what happened next?
Plus: Zohran v Sadiq name battle • Conservative mayoral candidate fallout • The Lewisham shopping centre housing dividing line •
London’s transport watchdog calls for major rethink on ‘floating bus stops’
London TravelWatch is the official consumer body for the capital’s transport users, so when it speaks people in positions of power and authority should listen.
London’s most expensive house, Reform UK’s treasurer, and a massively reduced tax bill
A £265m mansion in the heart of the Chelsea • Sold by billionaire Nick Candy and his ex-wife Holly Valance • Bought by a Labour-donating hedge fund boss • Why was the tax bill so small?
How to end rough sleeping in London
Plus: Hampstead Heath's new chain cafe review • Knightsbridge Ferrari rental scam • Can you spot the notable south London mum?
London drug dealers are hijacking Google Maps
Plus: Lime hands customer’s name to the police • More from inside the Shard • Soho box stacking mystery • The AI takeover of humanity begins with a fixation on Lambeth council
Interview: London Conservative Festus Akinbusoye on his mayoral bid, his policies and his party
The announcement by James Cleverly that he hopes to become the Conservative candidate for Mayor in 2028 has dominated discussion of his party’s hopes of winning. That is unsurprising: Cleverly is the high-profile figure some London Tories have long been hoping would step forward.
True London podcast: Will Sadiq Khan run again? And other mayoral speculation
The Conservatives will shortlist soon, two Liberal Democrats have said they’d like to run, built environment sage Peter Murray intends to stand as an Independent and Reform UK are making their usual sort of noise from the fringes.
Eating London’s sewage vegetables
Tomato plants are sprouting on London’s polluted rivers • You don’t want to know how they got there • When life gives you vegetables, make chutney
The Last King of Lewisham
Plus: Have we found London’s scammiest building? • The flat with the curious VIP party room • Greens’ by-election confusion • The political implications of liking to eat at Borough Market
James Cleverly's pitch to make London a Conservative city
The would-be Tory mayoral candidate makes his opening pitch to London Centric readers.
Mayor’s wide-ranging ‘strategic’ licensing powers to come into effect on 3 November
Sadiq Khan is receive sweeping powers to “call-in” and overturn local authority decisions about the licensing, opening hours and responsibilities of pubs, nightclubs and live music venues to enable what the government calls “a more enabling, proportionate and growth-focused…
Charles Wright: London, not Whitehall, should be in charge of ‘robotaxi’ rollout
Those who question the effectiveness of the London Assembly, the elected scrutiny arm of the Greater London Authority, might think again if they read this week’s report on “robotaxis” from its transport committee.
The man targeted by Ukrainian assassins — and Islington Council
Plus: Mr Whippy in flames • Elizabeth line to Staines • A £9m townhouse by Buckingham Palace • Self-driving cars with drivers
Lewis Baston: Labour’s Wandsworth by-election win restores fragile balance of power
The Conservatives lost control of Wandsworth last Thursday after having a slim majority of councillors for just over a month. That had occurred because in July a Labour councillor for Trinity ward resigned, meaning the council was technically no longer under No Overall Control…
Dave Hill: Any Tory, James Cleverly included, will face an uphill fight to become Mayor
Many Conservative activists in London will be excited by Sir James Cleverly’s announcement that he has resigned from Kemi Badenoch’s shadow cabinet with the aim of become his party’s candidate for Mayor of London in 2028 – and, of course, winning the mayoralty itself.
Prince Charles Cinema closure threat returns
Plus: Restaurants charging diners to pay the bill • Bring back the Woking 925 • Forest bike crime spree • TfL weight-loss advert loophole
John Vane: American Mayfair
Having dug out facts and folklore about subsurface Selfridges and its American connections, I decided to have a look at where Wisconsin’s own Harry Selfridge lived. Lansdowne House, or what’s left of it, is now No.
London landlords’ latest tactic: Inverse bidding wars
Plus: London’s most ‘given up on August’ street • What caused the big fire? • Dodgy shops raids to come • Buy a kayak, the floods are coming.
Dave Hill: Soho’s saviours and the future of the West End
Along with heatwaves, keeping the small boats “invasion” story going and unravelling a Cambridge professor, media herd attention this silly season has been captured by a campaign to save the “spirit of Soho” as those involved perceive it and, indeed, that of the West End as a…
Charles Wright: City Corporation wins heritage argument, but there are more battles to come
Back in July last year, a new skirmish over heritage protection versus development in the City of London broke out. It was instigated not by the usual “heritage lobby” suspects but by the City Corporation itself.
Should London shut down in August?
Paris does it. The Italians do it. London is already seeing "shutdown by proxy". Why not just formalise it?
Dave Hill: The unacceptable behaviour of ‘pro-Palestine’ protesters in London
It’s been reported that five people were arrested for inciting racial hatred during what the Met has described as a “spontaneous protest” outside the office of the Board of Deputies of British Jews in Camden yesterday.
The Tories think they can win back London
Their long-shot route to power • First, give the impression of actually liking London • What needs to go right if they want to win the mayoralty in 2028
London's air con era is here
Plus: Kid's Meal Summer is coming to London • Petition to save a restaurant that doesn't want saving • A Wicked strike • The £5.5m London home for people who want to slide into their private cinema
On the trail of a London gift shop owner
Plus: "Vertical drinking" politics • Robocop comes to Greggs • Robotaxis controlled by humans • London's festivals-in-parks mess
London's first month without rain
Plus: There's nowhere to bury the dead • London wants to keep its money • When will it stop being so damn hot • Who is to blame for turning off the air conditioning in the tower block?
"If you're poor, you can sweat": One building's air conditioning divide
The struggles of residents in a London tower block sum up the challenges of heatwave-era London.
Tim Donovan: Sadiq Khan surely knows he shouldn’t seek a fourth term as Mayor
Officially, Sadiq Khan is insisting he won’t decide until next year whether or not to stand for another term as Mayor of London. But back in February, I concluded that his decision will almost certainly be “no”.
Richard Brown: London cannot let its bridges keep on falling down
London’s bridges are the city’s sinews. They hold the capital together, enabling movement and ensuring stability. But, as recent reports of structural problems on Waterloo Bridge indicate, their construction and maintenance has often been troubled and contested.
Dave Hill: The future of On London.co.uk
Earlier this year, I decided that early next year I would put On London into a state of suspended animation – or cold storage or hibernation, whichever metaphor you prefer.
Hackney: Green council warned about ‘political’ actions on pensions fund
The Hackney Green Party’s pledge to divest the council’s pension fund investments from companies allegedly supporting genocide has been challenged amid warnings from council officers over major risks to the fund.
Who wants to be mayor of London?
When will Sadiq Khan make his decision? • Who wants the job? • Why is a candidate promising cheap gym membership?
Nick Cuff: The new London Plan needs to get real
The recent London Real Estate Forum (LREF) welcomed several thousand delegates to discuss the next stages of the capital’s development. No one doubted London’s ambition: the programme was chocker with interesting content about what the city might do in a few years’ time if this…
Sadiq Khan to the Lords
What's up with the mayor's peerage? • The Soho House founder and the women-only sculpture gallery facing eviction • In court for the sentencing of the TfL hackers
Dave Hill: A third London Conservative has launched a mayoral bid. But how many Tory voices will be heard?
As the Standard has reported, Kemi Badenoch has given the go-ahead for a selection panel to compile a shortlist of contenders to be the Conservative candidate for the next mayoral election in May, 2028.
Asif Aziz's hotel and a "mystery" fire test
Plus: Self-driving taxis with a human in the driver's seat • Pizza Pilgrims' HMO failings • Labour sued by one of its own ex-councillors
How American tipping culture came to London
Plus: Andy Burnham's copy-and-paste pledge to the capital • Dawn Butler's mayoral fundraiser • The ongoing hunt for a luxury children's meal.
Elin Morgan: On Spouter’s Corner
Think of Speakers’ Corner and what comes to mind? The spot where Karl Marx stood in 1855 to protest against the Sunday Trading Bill, hoping it would herald the English Revolution? Where the Pankhursts once proclaimed the cause of votes for women?
We tried London's first driverless bus
Scroll to the end for: Berlin Wall latest • More on the TfL hacker's motive • Picturehouse Central fully reopens • London's Norwegian connections
The teenage millionaire hacker from Tower Hamlets who took down TfL
Traced through his takeaway order • Began playing Roblox • Allegedly handled £200m in Crypto • Based in his family flat near Bow Road station • One of the country's leading hackers
Richard Derecki: Fairy-Fellers, ‘Bedlam’ and Richard Dadd
Richard Dadd produced some of the most extraordinary artwork of the Victorian era. His story is one of a hugely talented young man who, although afflicted by mental breakdown and tragedy, produced images from the depths of his illness and isolation that still fascinate us today.
Hackney Greens defend accepting council tenant ‘double decant’ at Woodberry Down
The Green tide rose high in Hackney in May, sweeping away Labour with promises to put people before profit, listen harder to communities, ensure that (in their manifesto’s words) “the council’s funding is not being used to fund genocide” and to take a stricter approach to the…
London's rental scammers have infiltrated the schemes meant to stop them
London's scammers find a new tactic • "I felt sick... They’re doing everything except for actually having a flat." • What happens when the scammers get inside the systems?
John Vane: Subsurface Selfridges
There was the option of asking the Selfridges comms team. The leads of others could have been more obsessively pursued. But maybe some mysteries are more fun left unsolved.
Who wants to be the Greens' mayoral candidate?
Plus: High street scam shops go to parliament • Palantir sues the mayor • Google's foxy HQ finally opens • Pret cornichon shortage latest
The heat is too damn high
The politicisation of air con • Frozen treats for animals • Deliveroo pays heat bonuses • Exclusive photo essay • Flash flood sewage spills • Refuse collectors talk maggots • When will it end?
Dave Hill: Wandsworth, Council Tax and elections
Conservative outrage over the prospect of Wandsworth increasing its Council Tax by 94 per cent could be considered deeply principled. Kemi Badenoch has informed the nation that party colleagues running the south London borough don’t want to hike residents’ bills by a vast amount…
London's schools can't cope with the heat
Plus: Boris Johnson's mystery plan for a second cable car • TfL hackers plead guilty • Brixton Market community bid submitted • It's really, really hot
What's really going on at Brixton Market?
The rush to raise £15m by Monday • London's indoor markets are facing fresh challenges • Who's actually wanting to buy it?
Julie Hamill: Remembering 9/11 in a London square
This year’s anniversary of 9/11 has been the toughest for me yet. Recalling living through that New York day, being in my flat nearby when it happened and seeing what I saw becomes harder as time passes.
"Bring swords": The viral riot that didn't happen
Plus: Why hasn't the Putney Pusher suspect been named? • Wooden sleep boxes for bus drivers • Who wants our stories taken off Google?
Harry Potter shops raided after London Centric investigation
Plus: Is London’s iPhone theft era really coming to an end? • A £9.5m mansion next to Henry VIII's childhood home • Go underground for your phone coverage
Charles Wright: Sadiq Khan’s new London Plan – What Londoners need to know
With under six weeks of consultation left for City Hall’s draft London Plan, Sadiq Khan’s new development blueprint for the capital, there’s been something of a feeding frenzy within the “built environment” community of developers, builders, consultants and lawyers – an array of…
John Vane: In the footsteps of The Angry Brigade
Approaching Monkenholt, a late 18th Century, Grade II listed house just north of Chipping Barnet, I tried to imagine the scene in January 1971 when two bombs were placed outside it.
‘Airbnb for sheiks’: the Shard's £50m empty apartments that just won't sell
Ten “cursed” apartments have sat empty since 2012 • The Qatari state can’t find buyers • The local council has approved plans to turn them into short-term lets at up to £18,000 per week
New study reveals scale and detail of misperceptions of London
SOME OPINIONS Denigrating, misrepresenting and generally portraying London as an urban dystopia brought low by a combination of criminal immigrants and a traitorous “metropolitan elite” has been a transatlantic mob propaganda exercise for years.
Should London’s Mayors retain a share of Corporation Tax too?
The government’s intentions for Income Tax and Business Rates are clear in outline if not yet in some important details – City Hall will be very interested in those – with the Overnight Visitor Levy, better known as the “tourist tax”, is on its way too.
Westminster and Sadiq Khan continue to disagree about Oxford Street and nightlife
The disturbingly hot summer, with its concocted media furore about “vertical drinking” and its heroic claims about late night alcohol consumption being a mighty force for growth, is fading into autumn (just about).
John Vane: Life and changing times of what was once called the Post Office Tower
From 1914, residents of Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia who possessed telephones had their calls connected through the Museum Telephone Exchange. A building on the North Crescent of Chenies Street, it owed its name to its closeness to the British Museum.
Intimidation, illegality and Mr Whippy: We join London’s ice cream wars
enters the ice cream trade • The capital’s soft serve vendors act like they can ignore the law • It turns out they probably can
Talk About London podcast: How higher education powers the capital
In many ways, London’s universities and other higher education institutions encapsulate the character of the capital: international, innovative, highly varied, renowned as a world leader and big – there are about 140 organisations of different types and sizes across the city.
John Vane: Hammersmith memories
I went to Hammersmith to learn about lesbians, to cross the Thames and to construct in my mind’s eye a pop star domestic scene that unfolded there four decades ago.
Charles Wright: London is now attracting more visitors than pre-pandemic
London seems increasingly to be the place that keyboard warriors and malign bots love to hate, to the extent that Sir Sadiq Khan will be launching a new £7 million mayoral tourism campaign later this year to counter a “flood of disinformation being peddled online”.
London’s A-Level results: uneven outcomes, uncertain futures
As usual, headline reactions to the latest A-Level results, published last week, focussed on how bad it is that London schools did best. Almost 33 per cent of A-level entries were awarded A* or A grades, extending their lead over the rest of England.
Charles Wright: The impressive comeback of Hornsey Town Hall
The reorganisation of London local government in 1965 left a crop of redundant town halls across the capital. Hornsey Town Hall was arguably the finest of them.
Are goats being sacrificed in this Hackney office?
Live animals dragged into a trendy east London building and never seen again • Fire rituals in London cemeteries • Bones left by strangers' graves • What is going on?
What new powers over taxes do Londoners think City Hall should have?
Andy Burnham has made giving more power to regional and local government a centrepiece of his programme for national government. This has been welcomed by politicians, think tanks and business organisations alike.
Westminster: A further corrective to the confected ‘vertical drinking’ row
This might be labouring the point. But a vast and bovine media herd continues to swallow whole and passively regurgitate the arrant soufflé of a story that Westminster Council, in a frenzy of un-British, puritan fervour, intends to force alcohol consumers in Soho, Mayfair and…
Richard Derecki: Beyond food banks
It is a dark cloud hanging over our dynamic and wealth-creating economy that people, many people, continue to face food insecurity. They lack ready access to enough nutritious food for an active, healthy life, creating a toxic combination of hunger and uncertainty.
Festus Akinbusoye: Safer homes in London will make for safer streets
Sadiq Khan deserves credit for following the Scottish public health approach to serious youth violence with London’s own violence reduction unit (VRU).
John Vane: Passing time in DSQ
Arriving at SpecSavers early meant finding something to do. From the other side of Bishopsgate, Liverpool Street beckoned, with its milling travellers and safe retail.
Julie Hamill: Escher at Somerset House – marvellous, if overfull
As a young teenager I had loads of time with nothing to do. Outside of school, the paper round, homework and housework, I spent a lot of time…staring. My imagination was never more captivated than when inside a good stare, usually with headphones on, listening to music.
Richard Brown: London’s population fall results from politicians cutting immigration
The sense of glee was palpable yesterday in the Daily Telegraph’s reporting that London’s population fell last year for the first time since the pandemic.
Dave Hill: Number 10 North is style. Devolution is substance
It’s been a mixed picture so far. The new Prime Minister’s policy announcements about a bus fare price cap and cuts to Value Added Tax on electricity bills and to Business Rates for pubs, clubs and live music venues have the strengths of directly affecting everyday lives and…
James Cracknell: What next for Enfield’s New Town plan?
The government announced in March that London would be getting two New Towns, one at Thamesmead in Greenwich and the other at Crews Hill and Chase Park in Enfield, where housebuilding is set to be “accelerated”.
The Thames Water customers who can't shower in their own homes
Plus: The Oxford Street cable car that never was • Khan and the Met go to war over Palantir • The London council closing its children's water play areas in a heatwave
Julie Hamill: Come to the Cabaret, old chum (but maybe don’t sing along)
I recently went to the Harold Pinter Theatre to see Liberace and Liza: A Tribute, an affectionate homage to those showbiz giants, Wladziu Liberace and Liza Minnelli. The two performers’ impressions of the stars were uncannily accurate.