Diary
 Wed 28 October 2026
18:30 - 20:30 Annual General Meeting 2026 The Gallery
No forthcoming events are published yet. New events are on the way...
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Agenda
This agenda listing shows events scheduled for the next six weeks.
Scroll through events with the large next/previous arrows. Hover your mouse over the month grid adjacent [touch dots on mobiles] for event details.
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Planning, Environment and Transport committee meeting
📅 Thu 8th October | 14:00 - 16:00
🚩 Room B1 70 Cowcross St, EC1M 6EJ (map)
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Annual General Meeting 2026
📆 Wed 28th October | 18:30 - 20:30
🚩 77 Cowcross Street, EC1M 6EL (map)
Wednesday 28 October 6.30pm at The Gallery, 77 Cowcross Street, EC1M 6EL Notice is hereby given to member societies of the 2026 AGM of the London Forum of Amenity and Civic Societies. Doors open for networking, drinks and nibbles from 6.00pm. Please book your place(s) using the booking facility ( https://www.londonforum.org.uk/events/agm-2026#booking ). Agenda Welcome and Introduction Approval of the Minutes of the AGM of 16 October 2025, available here ( https://www.londonforum.org.uk/agm-papers/ ) Chair’s Report – Chair Michael Jubb Financial Report – Treasurer Ali Dezyanian Approval of the Annual Report and Accounts for 2025-2026, available here ( https://…
West London Orbital overground
TfL is making plans for a new rail service on existing, underused rail lines in west London – this would become part of the London Overground network. The West London Orbital rail service would run between Hendon in north London towards Hounslow in southwest London.
A new station at Lionel Road will serve Brentford football stadium and relieve pressure on nearby stations.
The consultation runs until 18th November 2026, as here
Members near the stations are asked to respond and copy London Forum at planning@londonforum.org.uk.
Planning Resources Are Stretched Thin
According to research by the Home Builders Federation (HBF) nine in ten local authority planning departments in England and Wales are understaffed, delaying planning decisions and threatening the Government’s target of 1.5 million new homes.
HBF’s Planning on Empty report is based on a Freedom of Information survey of councils across England and Wales examining staffing levels, vacancies, staff turnover and the use of agency workers during the 2025/26 financial year.
What is the situation in your Council? Responses are welcome
Presentation slides: Will the London Plan deliver the housing and places London needs?
The slides from last week’s London Forum/GLA event on the draft London Plan have been added to its event page.
Key policies in the NPPF
The following is a blog recently written by the lawyer Simon Ricketts which is intended to help developers to get a planning application approved. It is helpful for London Forum’s members to understand parts of the new NPPF and for considering its content when assessing whether or not a proposed scheme for their area has been designed and presented in a way that takes account of the key NPPF policies identified in the blog. We reproduce the blog by kind permission of the author.
Simon Ricketts
To maximise the prospect of securing planning approval, scheme promoters need to ensure that their schemes press as many of the relevant buttons in the new NPPF as possible.
I have counted 21 of them, which I set out below. [more…]
Garden Annexe, Caravan, or Mobile Home?
Tim Catchpole of the Mortlake and East Sheen Society writes…
Our Society has had a recent experience which we would like to share with other London Forum members who may or may not have had a similar experience.
As a rule we do not normally make comments on planning applications for any development that is not visible from the public realm. However, the application in question was for planning permission for the ‘construction of a granny annex ancillary to the main house.’ We were not going to comment until neighbours approached us and drew attention to the size of the annex and the loss of trees. So we sent a representation to the Council recommending refusal in accordance with its policies against back-garden development and, sure enough, permission was accordingly refused.
However, a few days later a new application arrived for the same site, this time for a certificate of [more…]
![TBM 'Florence' [Photo: HS2 ltd]](https://i0.wp.com/www.londonforum.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/HS2-Florence.jpg?fit=1501%2C1000&ssl=1)
HS2 Reset
The High Speed 2 railway has had numerous resets yet it clings on to its existence albeit in a truncated form. The latest announcement by the Secretary of State for Transport followed the publication of the Lovegrove report into what went wrong, and some interim recommendations from the on-going review of how the project should be reset that is being conducted by HS2’s CEO, Mark Wild. The Lovegrove report is useful because it finally nails the claim repeated over many years by politicians and many of those directly involved in the HS2 project, that its core aim is to increase railway capacity. It was designed for high speed, hence the name; indeed for higher speeds than anywhere in Europe.
HS2 has incurred all the extra cost that goes with adherence to a rigidly straight line in order to maximise speed. One of the interim recommendations is to reduce the speed – [more…]