The London Minute ⏰ Friday 4 July 2025
Piccadilly Line fire, Oxford Street pedestrianisation updates, hopes for Haggerston railway arch + Hot Chip at the Tate
🌤️ Good morning London. Here’s Friday’s London Minute.
☀️ Weekend weather: Sunny and hot today, cooling down with a chance of rain on Saturday, then warmer and cloudy on Sunday. Highs of 27C and lows of 14C. The high temperatures look like they’ll continue next week. - The full Met Office forecast is here.
🔥 More than 100 firefighters worked through the night tackling a fire in railway arches in Harrow. Gas cylinders exploded and businesses are damaged. - The fire brigade shared more details at around 1am, saying the Piccadilly Line, which runs over the railway arches, is expected to remain severely impacted for some time.
⮑ MyLondon’s William Morgan filed this report at 5am.
🚇 London’s transport chief Andy Lord has denied that the £3 billion fleet of new Piccadilly line trains are having to be ‘rebuilt because they don’t fit in Tube tunnels’. - Ross Lydall, The Standard.
The Metropolitan Line is due to be closed all weekend for maintenance work. - Get live TfL travel updates here.
District Line delays have been described as an ‘international embarrassment’ after thousands of tennis fans couldn’t get to Wimbledon on time. - Emine Sinmaz, The Guardian.
🚦 Visual plans for Oxford Street’s pedestrianisation will be published ‘by year end’ according to Will Norman, London’s Walking & Cycling Commissioner, in response to questioning from Caroline Russell.
⮑ London Assembly members met yesterday and agreed the street’s new design must ‘recognise the urgency of the climate crisis’. - They published this press release.
⮑ The London Cycling Campaign has published a report calling for a low traffic area across the whole of the West End. - Linus Rees, The Fitzrovia News.
🚗 ‘Exclusive: The shelved plan to ban cars from Central London’ - Andrew Kersley, The Londoner.
🖼️ Police are investigating vandalism of the Windrush Untold Stories exhibition in Brixton’s Windrush Square. - Alan Slingsby, Brixton Blog.
📚 Seven Enfield libraries will all shut their doors for the final time this weekend, the local council has confirmed. - James Cracknell, Enfield Dispatch.
🛠️ A Haggerston railway arch retail space that has been empty for eight months has been described as ‘a monument to broken trust and wasted potential’. The arch was the workplace of car mechanic Len Maloney for 40 years until Places for London, the commercial property arm of Transport for London, doubled the rent, evicted Maloney (Minute edition 108). The unit is still on the market for £91,800. Now the East End Trades Guild says it has plans to secure a Community Land Trust site ‘equivalent or larger than what was lost, and designed to deliver lasting, inclusive prosperity’. - More details in this post.
🏳️🌈 A full day (and night) of events are planned for Pride in London on Saturday in Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, Golden Square, Dean Street and Soho Square. - Find all the event details in Dan Egg’s preview for Time Out.
⮑ ‘Party or protest: Pride around the world’ - Evan Moffitt, The Observer.
⮑ A new mural has been unveiled on the corner of Redchurch Street and Turville Street on Shoreditch. It celebrates London’s LGBTQI+ community and was designed by artist Hannah Dickins aka Disco Dickins.
✌️ 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.
🌻 A micro-meadow aims to attract more wildlife to the Southbank Centre in response to declining UK populations of insects, birds and bats, writes Abigail Finney in the Southwark News.
🖼️ The Hampstead Summer Festival is on Sunday from 12pm to 5pm. There are loads of events planned, from an art fair to a birds of prey display. - Full details here.
🪩 This weekend’s Tate Corner Bar DJ is Hot Chip. - Tickets here.
🗑️ Litter pickers, gloves and bags will be provided for volunteers at the monthly Tooting Tidy, this month tackling Tooting Common. - From 11am at the Tooting Bec station. - More details here.
📆 There’s plenty more to do in the Londonist weekend guide.
⮑ And even more in the East of the city in The Wick’s weekend 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.
📌 “Salad Days Market returns to Gipsy Hill Brewery Taproom this weekend. Shop handmade and vintage products, drink craft beer and eat delicious street food all in one place! As always it's free entry and dog friendly. On the 5th & 6th July, from 11am - 4pm.” - Thanks as always to Daisy & Liv for sharing this.
📌 “Our new historical play 'BLANDY' is being performed on the 16th July at Etcetera Theatre in Camden, at 7pm and 9pm. The play is an experimental dark comedy recasting the true story of 18th-century poisoner Mary Blandy as a contemporary fairy tale of a woman and her outcast body. Please come along if you'd like!” - Thanks to the organisers for sharing this.
📌 “Molly McElwee, one of the top tennis journalists, has just released a book finally shining a light on the sport’s female champions. You can come to the launch event at The Battersea Bookshop on Tuesday 8th July using this link.” - Thanks to Isaac for sharing this.
📈 The most-viewed links from the last newsletter:
🏡 £3.4m Sheen house is London Centric’s ‘Preposterous property of the week’.
🎾 A grass chemical is being used at Wimbledon to ‘make water wetter’.
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