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South Kensington tube station is the gateway to three of London’s most important cultural institutions. It’s the closest station to the Science Museum, the V&A and the Natural History Museum (recently revealed as the UK’s most visited attraction in 2025), meaning that more than 30 million people cross through its barriers each year. However, there’s one major issue.
The Grade II-listed station is the tube network’s busiest station that doesn’t have step-free access – a nightmare for wheelchair users, people with buggies and those with mobility needs. TfL reckons that more than 500,000 journeys a year haven’t been made to or from South Kensington because of its accessibility issues. But that’ll soon change.
South Ken’s makeover received planning permission back at the end of 2023. More than two years later, TfL says that the work is finally ‘gathering pace’ and construction will start at the end of the year.
The project is a join venture between property developer Native Land and TfL’s property company Places for London. It’ll involve a new, much-needed step-free station entrance on Thurloe Street and a new dedicated eastbound platform for the Circle and District line, with lifts from those platforms to the Piccadilly line.
The station’s shopping arcade and adjoining Thurloe Street retail units will also get a spruce up to provide 53 new homes, 35 percent of which will be affordable. Plus, a new four-storey building at the front of the hub, named the Bullnose, will have food and drink units on the ground floor and offices on the upper floors.
Scott Anderson, head of property development at TfL’s Places for London, said the planned upgrades will make the station ‘a jewel of the tube network’.
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