By Ben Derbyshire, chair at HTA Design, former RIBA president, and President of the London Forum.

I don’t generally play for laughs, but I got one anyway at Design West’s Arnolfini conference on Labour’s then-new housing plans when I urged the audience not to hold their breath waiting for the twelve promised new towns. We still haven’t finished the ones Richard Crossman began in the 1960s. As it turns out, we needn’t have worried because of the seven finally announced, all but one are not new towns at all, but much more sensible urban extensions.… Read more...

Our President, Ben Derbyshire, provides his Insights into our recent Densifying the Suburbs event.

I welcomed the invitation to speak at an open meeting of the Forum, ‘Densifying the Suburbs’ alongside Professor Tony Travers of UCL and local planners, Paul Lewin and Justin Carr from Waltham Forest and Brent councils respectively.  My challenge – most people who have time to participate in their local civic societies will already be well housed, so what, I asked, should be our collective response to fellow citizens who are not?… Read more...

Bus passenger numbers in London reached a peak of 2.4 billion in 2014, but since then have fallen to 1.8 billion in 2025. This decline is now exercising the Mayor and GLA Transport Committee, but it is not a new phenomenon. From 1958 to the early 1980s there was steady decline in bus usage. In the ten years to December 1969 the scheduled fleet fell from 7756 to 6900, if Country buses and Green Line services are included.… Read more...

Statutory consultees play an important role in the planning application process by providing expert advice on significant environmental, transport, safety, and heritage issues.  There are currently 13 organisations that local planning authorities (LPAs) must consult about specialist issues when they receive relevant planning applications, from the Environment Agency and National Highways to Historic England.

Their role is very important, but there is widespread agreement that the system is not working well, causing needless duplication of effort and delays in making decisions.… Read more...

The latest projections from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show that between 2022 and 2032, the number of households in England is expected to grow from 23.5 million to 25.9 million, an increase of 10.3%. That is equivalent to an average of 242,000 additional households per year. Nearly two-thirds of that increase will come from households headed by someone over 65 years old. Rates of increase will be much lower for households headed by someone under retirement age.… Read more...

The Government recently published Planning Statistics for the year to March 2025. For the 32 London boroughs, the statistics showed some interesting features.

First, they showed that all but three boroughs – Camden, Ealing and Harrow delegated decisions to officers on 90% or more of the applications they received; and that 19 of them delegated decisions on more than 98% of applications. Two boroughs – Enfield and Redbridge – delegated decisions on nearly 100% of applications.… Read more...

The first initiative to bring London-based amenity societies together as a federation was the brainchild of two prominent and environmentally-committed members of the Blackheath Society, Neil Rhind and Tony Aldous. Neil, whose expertise was on the history and social development of Blackheath, had been the Society’s press officer and later its President from 2016 to his death in 2023.

Tony, a journalist, wrote on environmental issues for The Times and The Independent. He published many books on environmental matters, one of which was “London Villages”.… Read more...

This is the second in a series of articles on London’s population, making use of the Office of National Statistics’ latest growth projections, published recently here. The focus is on variations across both inner and outer London boroughs.

Context: London and the rest of the country

London currently has a population of around 9.1 million, representing 15% of the total population of England and Wales. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has published its latest projections which show that London’s population is expected to have grown by 6.7% by 2032, to around 9.7 million.… Read more...