The London Minute ⏰ Thursday 10 July 2025
Lewisham fire tragedy, green light for Notting Hill Carnival, Peckham Rye revamp paused, Obama at the O2 + Tony Hawk drops in to London Zoo
☀️ Good morning London. It’s getting even hotter today, with 32C forecast. Here’s today’s London Minute.
🎉 The organisers of Notting Hill Carnival have confirmed that Europe’s largest street event is confirmed to go ahead this August Bank holiday weekend. After a review into safety and policing, additional funding of £958,000 has been granted by City Hall and the local councils. - Joel Campbell, The Voice.
🚉 A decade’s worth of planning to upgrade Peckham Rye station has been paused due to lack of funding. - The context is published in Murky Depths.
⮑ The UK Government buried the delay towards the end of this lengthy press release.
⮑ Designs for the revamp, which got planning permission in 2023, already cost £1m. Peckham Rye is the busiest interchange station in the UK without step-free access to platforms or accessible facilities for passengers.
⮑ The plan to demolish the old shopping centre in front of the station is still set to go ahead, as it’s a separate council project. - Ian Mansfield, IanVisits.
🔥 Tributes have been paid to 12-year-old Fabian Henry, who died after a fire at his home in Lewisham yesterday. - John Dunne and Brooke Davies, Metro.
🚎 The London bus routes that get the most complaints from passengers have been revealed, with route 65, between Ealing Broadway and Kingston, in first place. - Ross Lydall, The Standard.
🚇 Mobile phone coverage on the Underground is expanding, with more sections of the Piccadilly, Northern, and Victoria lines being switched on recently. - There’s a map of the progress on IanVisits.
🪩 A new LGBTQ+ cultural space, ‘Chroma’, is set to open in the disused railway arches at Bankside Yards, on the former site of the gay nightclub XXL. - Evie Flynn, Southwark News.
💻 You’ve heard of TfL (Transport for London), now here’s DfL: Data for London. Launched yesterday, as part of London Data Week, the new library contains 5,000+ datasets. It aims ‘to make finding and sharing data about the capital quicker, easier and more collaborative’.
“This isn't about technology for its own sake. It's about practical value. A good example is how housing energy data in the London Building Stock Model has been used to support the Warmer Homes programme, helping boroughs identify homes in need of retrofitting and targeting support where it's needed most.” - Theo Blackwell, Chief Digital Officer for London
✌️ Better news
This section aims to include better news from all over London. It’s a wide range of things, and as always you’re welcome to submit yours here. My hope is that it inspires more civic pride and community spirit, new plans in your calendar and a few smiles or laughs along the way.
🇺🇸 Former US President Barack Obama plans to share ‘a message of hope, resilience, and the power of lifting one another up’ when he appears at the O2 Arena on 24 September. - Tickets go on sale today from 10am at this link.
🚶🏼♀️➡️ A series of events in solidarity with refugees, people seeking asylum, migrants and those who have experienced immigration detention begins today. Refugee Tales is at Hackney Picturehouse this evening. - Full details are in The Wick’s weekly newsletter.
🍅 Pupils from three schools in Islington will set up shop at Chapel Market today from 12pm to 4pm, selling veg they grew themselves. - Mike Brooke, Islington Gazette.
🛹 Skateboarding icon Tony Hawk says he is ‘truly honoured’ that London Zoo has named its Harris Hawk ‘Tony’. The zoo appears in Hawk’s new computer game, which Hawk skated in real life during a promotional visit. A press release adds: “Publishing Activision also announced that they are making a donation to London Zoo to support conservation efforts, including care for the year ahead for Tony the Hawk.”
📆 Festivals galore, a new dinosaurs exhibition and Wimbledon finals are in this weekend’s Londonist events guide.
📌 The London Minute Community Noticeboard:
⮑ Please get in touch using this form. < It’s the only way to get something featured in the newsletter.
📌 “Creative Writing Workshop with Dr Anna Johnson : Saturday, July 12 · 2pm - 5pm at RuptureXIBIT. Writing others/ writing yourself - crafting character in fiction, life writing and autofiction.” - Thanks to the organisers for sharing this.
☕️ The Islington Edit is still taking your submissions for the area’s best coffee shops:
📈 The most-viewed links from the last newsletter:
⏰ The Minute is written between 5am and 7am every day. Thank you for reading daily edition number 242. This newsletter remains independent, ad-free and free to 6,040+ subscribers, sending 100,000+ visits to other local news sources since launch last year. Word-of-mouth is how it’s growing. The Minute is free but it takes more work than it looks so please consider supporting it.
Thanks for the shout out, much appreciated!!