The Time Out London blog team

Cavendish Square Gardens, near Oxford Circus, could soon change dramatically. Built in 1717, the little green haven in London’s West End has been offering respite to harried office workers, shoppers and tourists since it opened to the public in the 1970s.  Now there is a proposal to completely redesign the popular square, and plans are one step closer to becoming reality after Westminster City Council ‘appropriated’ the land for the developers.  Reef Group, the developers behind the project, have promised to spend £3 million improving the gardens. The company wants to almost double the amount of pedestrian footways and install a new ‘moat-like’ water feature, alongside fresh planting and building new entrances to the park along the southwest. There would also be a new major pedestrian crossing linking the square to Holles Street and Oxford Street and a two-metre-high railing to be installed around the gardens as well as 50 additional cycle parking spaces. Image: Reef Group An underground car park currently resides beneath the square, but Reef wants to turn this into a subterranean health facility. This was approved in 2022 and Q Park, which runs the car park, has agreed to surrender a lease that would otherwise run until 2036. The council is currently the freeholder for the majority of the site and has proposed selling the underground space to Reef while retaining the garden, which could raise £42 million for the council.  Image: Reef Group According to a council...

It’s the saga that keeps on going: the Overground extension to Surrey Canal Road in south London. TfL first announced plans to extend an Overground line to Bermondsey all the way back in 2009. It was finally approved by Lewisham Council in 2022. Then, after years of setbacks, in 2024 property developers said they wanted to drop £17 million on a brand new station next to Millwall Stadium. But with no more news, by the end of 2025 south Londoners had all but given up on their dreams of a new Overground hub. Now, however, there’s been an exciting update.  Plans to build Surrey Canal Road station have actually moved forward, as Lewisham Council has just approved extra funding to construct the Overground terminal.  If it actually goes ahead, Surrey Canal Road will be on the Windrush line, with southern connections to Clapham Junction, Crystal Palace, West Croydon, and northern connections to Shoreditch, Hoxton and Highbury and Islington. It would serve the local area, which includes a new 3,500-home housing development being built around Millwall stadium.  Currently, due to its poor connectivity the development faces a Grampian condition which says that building work must pause once it reaches 600 homes. The further 2,900 homes would be unlocked once a new station is built to serve the area.  So far, TfL has secured £25 million from Renewal Group, which is building the New Bermondsey development and around £1 million from Fosfel Apollo Limited. Lewisham Council has also offered...

London isn’t always a joyful place to be. It can have an unfriendly reputation, it drains our bank accounts dry, too many phones get nabbed and it’s often cold, dark and grey. But the city is also full of things that will instantly boost your mood – vast green spaces, delicious food, gorgeous art and wholesome community gatherings. Given all that, it may come as no surprise that the Big Smoke is home to some of Great Britain’s happiest and least happy residents, according to a new survey.  Property platform Rightmove has released its Happy at Home Index 2025, showing where people feel the most and least happy living. Tens of thousands of Brits from more than 200 parts of the country told the site their feelings on different aspects of their hometown, including access to green spaces, the sense of community, safety and proximity to amenities. Richmond-upon-Thames was crowned the happiest borough in London for yet another year. The borough consistently ranks highly in the index and was the second happiest area in all of Britain. Its residents rated it highly access to nature (Richmond Park, Bushy Park, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew are all local) and essential local services, and for its spread of independent shops and restaurants (see Time Out’s favourite restaurants in Richmond here). But if you want a house here, it’ll set you back an average of £760,700.  Photograph: Shutterstock In second place (and third nationally) was the borough of Camden, which also has a...