Barnes2050 collects these.

They are not predictions. They are nudges. Signals.

I look for stories that might signal a change in direction, challenge our assumptions or offer clues about the choices facing Barnes between now and 2050.

What might this mean for Barnes SW13? What can we learn from them? Which should we resist?

Looking back at October, one theme keeps emerging: control.

Who controls our streets, our transport, our infrastructure and the money to pay for it? And how much control do we really have over a changing climate?

Four developments in particular might prove significant in the years ahead:

• A grim climate milestone: crossing 1.5°C now appears inevitable.

• A shift in political power: London’s Mayor gains new financial firepower while Richmond council struggles with cuts.

• The beginnings of a push-back against robotaxis and anti-social e-bike riding.

• Another triumph of London engineering: the Super Sewer is working, and Barnes is benefiting.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Climate

Crossing 1.5ºC now ‘inevitable’

We start with the climate because thats what frames this project

A temporary breach of the 1.5C global-warming limit is now ‘inevitable’ following ‘decades of insufficient climate action’, according to an UN Environment Programme reported Carbon Brief.

Current national policies also put the world on a trajectory towards approximately 2.8°C of warming this century, reports the Financial Times.

What might this mean for Richmond borough in 2050? The Met Office has a useful guide. TLDR: Hotter and wetter.

For Barnes, this is another reminder that adapting to a changing climate is becoming as important as trying to prevent further warming.

Simon Clarke on Instagram managed to find some hope in the global energy transition.

Summer 2026

Lorraine Whitmarsh and Bella Zanin published new survey data about the effect of the five heatwaves earlier this year:

High temperatures made more 50% of British people more fearful about the future, including how hot summers will affect children.

One poll found that 65% of the British public were now concerned about climate change

Polling shows that climate change and the environment shot up people’s lists of concerns in 2026, with 51% of people saying the recent heatwaves made them feel it’s more important that the UK government and businesses tackle climate change.

While we wait for the UK Government’s official total of excess deaths during the summer’s five heatwaves, researchers estimate that more than 50,000 people died across Europe, with two-thirds of those deaths attributable to climate change.

After half a century the Barnes Community Association (BCA) has restored the signs on Barnes Bridge are back.

The replicas use anti-graffiti paint. Fingers-crossed that works.

There’s a fine balance to be found between celebrating our heritage and restrictive nostalgia. BCA have once again found the sweet spot.

The one word that sets this sign apart?

Frequent.

#BarnesStyle

Infrastructure

Hammersmith Bridge

An old idea resurfaced this week. The Londoner suggests a new Hammersmith Bridge could be funded by the City Bridge Foundation, which currently funds five central London bridges, with unspent income going to charitable causes.

Nick Maini made a similar case in February 2026, arguing.

We could fund public transport on Hammersmith Bridge today for just £10 million.

Maini also proposed changing the Foundation’s charter, but with a twist: rather than restoring the Bridge for full vehicular access, he favoured investment in a new active travel bridge.

There is a bigger question here about who should be responsible for London’s bridges. As Richard Brown argued in OnLondon:

Responsibility for [London bridge’s] upkeep and enhancement is contested and their governance is split, in a characteristically London manner, between a medieval endowment, central government, a handful of local authorities and a city-wide transport body.

Allowing this mess to continue (or quite likely worsen) is risky: closing bridges damages business, impedes free movement and makes London look pretty shabby internationally.

Meanwhile, the future of Hammersmith Bridge continues to roil local councils. As Putney.news reported, Wandsworth Council, now under largely Conservative leadership, developed and then rejected a Bridge plan, before asking the council to approve it anyway.

The Bridge seems to do this to politicians.

Do not touch that keyboard: Heathrow’s third runway is consulting, again

Yes, another consultation is underway. Unlike the earlier UK Government consultation on national policy for Heathrow expansion, this one is being run by Heathrow itself to gather views on its detailed proposals before submitting a formal planning application.

The deadline is 22 December.

This is such a consequential development, you should share your thoughts. Remember the Prime Minister description of Heathrow expansion as ‘a matter for London and Londoners’.

But not just yet.

Local civic societies and councils are currently developing advice on how to respond most effectively.

For Barnes, the big questions are what a third runway might mean for aircraft noise, flight paths and air quality. I plan to explore these before the consultation closes.

If you really can’t wait, then Putney.news has a useful summary.

There’s no shortage of coverage about Heathrow’s plans. You don’t need to read The FT’s briefing. The headline says enough,

The ever-shrinking case for expanding Heathrow

Instead, spend a few minutes with George Monbiot in The Guardian. Arguably the best single summary of the current situation and what it might mean by 2050.

Oxford Street pedestrianisation

Oxford Street is the nation’s high street. At the heart of the West End, it is one of the world’s most recognised commercial destinations.

So claims the Oxford Street Development Corporation. And after years of setbacks, Monday 26 October marked the first day of its pedestrianisation. The first stretch to change covered almost a kilometre between Orchard Street and Great Portland Street,

In its response The Guardian said,

Cities should be designed around people, not cars.

Blush

This is how it happened and this is how it felt on the first day.

The hullabaloo in W1 got me thinking about what might happen to Barnes High Street by 2050. More soon. My instinctive response surprised me.

Happy birthday Zebra Crossing!

75 years old on Saturday 31 October. The world’s first zebra crossing is associated with Slough High Street in Berkshire.

As Barnes moves from a car-first to people-first approach to developing, these and other crossings are going to become more common. Barnes needs more crossings: here and here and here, for example,

Flooding resilience

The return of the rain saw a useful reminder from Community BlueScapes that if you see a blocked drain, then please report it.

Staying with Barnes2050’s favourite infrastructure project, Community BlueScapes have been showing off their latest project at Castelnau Community Centre.

Mobile connectivity

Another take on our digital infrastructure: an attempt to map users’ real-world experience of mobile connectivity rather than the theoretical best.

London’s mobile connectivity is measured across four different metrics: upload speed, download speed, signal strength and latency.

At first glance this felt like third-order topic. So, what?

Except it wasn’t that long ago that SW13 had severe mobile signal blackspots.

Looking ahead, Barnes2050 imagines a world in which connectivity makes our built environment feel live and alive. Better connected data, signals and barriers could allow us to manage access dynamically.

Dynamic space management might allow our streets to respond to changing conditions, giving buses priority when services are delayed or redirecting traffic when flooding makes a road unsafe.

Transport

E-bikes

Oddly, for one of the most dynamic parts of London’s transport mix, there is still remarkably little information about how the shared e-bike market operates. As London Centric explains:

One of the great mysteries of London’s e-bike market is that no one — including Transport for London — really knows how the largely unregulated companies involved operate, let alone how many bikes are on the capital’s roads.

But for the first time in years of asking, we might be heading towards an answer.

October was notable for a series of stories suggesting that London, and other cities, are beginning to get tougher about how bikes are used and managed:

• Ealing Council now has the power to seize shared e-bikes blocking pavements, reports the BBC.

• Shared e-bike operators could face bans for failing to comply with parking rules, says The Times (££ paywall).

• Also in The Times, Deliveroo is threatening sanctions against delivery riders who speed.

• City of London Police have been ‘sin-binning’ cyclists who jump red lights at Bank.

• Paris has started using speed-limiters to counter anti-social riding, according to Bob From Accounts on X.

Different problems, different responses, but a common direction: greater control over how bikes are operated, ridden and parked.

Barnes2050 remains committed to the idea that e-bikes are key to reducing the number of cars on our roads. That will only happen when anti-social riding and parking are tamed.

Robotaxis

Transport for London (TfL) needs powers to cap autonomous vehicle numbers in the city, along with devolved powers to govern, and withdraw, future schemes.

That’s the conclusion of a new London Assembly Transport Committee report. One of their concerns is tracking the amount of ‘empty miles driven’ in order to understand the robotaxis’ impact on congestion.

Yep.

Buses and bikes

London’s 8,900 buses are getting a brain transplant, says James O’Malley.

Another piece of future infrastructure capable of making live data useful. Maybe every bus stop in Barnes could display live bus timings?

And a welcome reminder that transport other than cars can offer substantial returns on investment (ROI). BikeIsBest reports that Cycling UK’s The Route Forward says for every £1 spent, we all secure the equivalent of £5.62 in economic and social benefit.

Governance

Mayor of London finally gets real powers in the Budget

The 2026 Budget announced five significant financial powers for London’s Mayor:

• Income tax: Receive an assigned share of London revenues from 2028

• Business rates: Retain more locally generated revenue

• Tourist tax: Authority to introduce a levy on overnight accommodation

• Retention zones: Keep business-rate growth in two designated development areas.

• Business rates supplement: Extend the existing levy to finance new infrastructure

Together these provide more predictable revenue to support borrowing for major transport and regeneration projects. Some of them will require legislation or implementation.

The short-term effect on Barnes will be minimal. But this might signal the beginning of a significant shift in power between London’s Mayor and its borough councils.

The distinction matters. More money does not automatically mean more legal powers. The Mayor is gaining greater financial firepower, while Richmond council faces growing pressure to fund its statutory services. Meanwhile, separate changes to planning rules could reduce the role of elected councillors in some local decisions.

Taken together, these developments raise an intriguing question for Barnes2050: by 2050, how much of our future will be shaped by decisions made in Richmond, and how much by City Hall?

After all, as The Standard puts it,

Fiscal devolution to make Lord Khan one of Europe’s most powerful mayors

This is a bigger story, one I intend to return to.

If you are hoping this might fund a new Hammersmith Bridge, remember it isn’t a priority for the UK Government or the Mayor of London. No surprise then, the next on the spending agenda for that money, according to reports in City AM, are the new West Orbital overground line, improvements to Stratford station, and, most importantly of all, the long-awaited Bakerloo line extension to Lewisham.

Richmond council also believes the UK Government is further reducing local democracy with changes to the planning process.

New planning rules due to come into force on 1 November 2026 will mean many smaller planning applications are decided by council officers under delegated powers, rather than by elected councillors at public committee meetings.

These include household extensions, developments of up to nine homes and minor commercial schemes.

More extensions, perhaps, as Barnes adapts to the needs of larger, multigenerational households?

Nature

Beverley Brook

The Community BlueScapes love-in with Barnes2050 continues.

This time, the Barn Elms Southside works are complete, potentially protecting more homes from flooding.

An earlier project is already producing results. Community BlueScapes reports that a European eel has been spotted Beverley Brook..

More good news from Thames

Something about Wet Wipes. or rather the lack of, caught the attention of the nation’s journalists.

Reports on the success of the Super Sewer have appeared in:

• BBC

• Guardian

• FulhamSW6 who report ‘The Thames foreshore beside Hammersmith Bridge is showing the strongest signs yet that one of the river’s most persistent pollution problems may finally be easing, report’

• London Society

Palms and Parks

Kew Gardens is looking for £1m to save its famous Palm House, as Londonist reports

There are several ways to help, from making a simple donation, to sponsoring a pane of glass (£25 for a small pane; £100 for a large pane), or even a species of plant (from £25 for a traveller’s palm, up to £500 for the critically endangered Clay’s hibiscus from Hawaii) within the restored Palm House. Your name won’t appear at Kew, but you’ll receive a personalised digital certificate.

Kew is leading the way: the development at Vine Road aims to follow. Kew wants to use renewal to build for the climate we are going to have.

We do love a (new) park. Bloomberg (££ paywall) report from Boston. Or read about Castelnau Park for free.

Maybe in twenty years you’ll be able to visit it, too.

This map defies description. It is called Tiny London. Here is an the usual view of the peninsula.

Now zoom in. An unusual treatment.

Do you recognise where this is?

Designed to please rather than be useful, maybe. Explore and read about it at tiny.london

Lifestyle

Richmond is the fourth best place in England for children to grow up

The Childhood Lottery report by the Children’s Commissioner spans health, education, care, family life and communities.

Richmond scored 707 out of a possible 960. It performed particularly well on education, with 70 per cent of children in the borough achieving a good pass in both English and maths GCSEs, compared with around 45 per cent nationally.

The question for Barnes2050 is whether Richmond can maintain this standard as the borough’s population ages and the demands on public services change.

Prepping in Barnes

Not quite the panic-buying of the Covid pandemic, but loo roll, tinned beans, bottled water and FM radios have been flying off supermarket shelves since the UK Government urged us to be ‘emergency ready’.

It seems the advice to keep enough food, water and other essential supplies to last at least three days is having an impact. Walk through Sainsbury’s or Tescos in Barnes to see for yourself.

If you haven’t stocked up, the Government has published its Be Ready checklist to help prepare for storms, power cuts, transport disruption, supply-chain problems and other unexpected emergencies.

Officials say being prepared for three days can help people stay safe and self-sufficient while emergency services and support are directed to those most in need.

Those very nice people at the UK Government have even produced printable checklist.

261031 Be Ready Checklist Uk Government

112KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Maybe that’s a fitting way to end October’s collection of signals.

We cannot know what the future holds, but we can make choices today that leave Barnes - place and people - better prepared for whatever comes next.

1976 has figured large in my life. That was the summer the twelve year old me gorged on village cricket for the first time. Day after day, from spring through late summer. Tanned, blonde hair. Plus one or two outstanding batting performances.

It turns out 2022 has become the new 1976. At least was my first impression listening to Richmond council’s most recent Sustainability Forum, an open meeting held several times a year that gives us a window into the council’s thinking on climate change.

There were so many stories from that livid summer when temperatures topped 40ºC. On 19 July 2022 the London Fire Brigade ran out of engines, on what the Brigade and Mayor called its busiest day since the Second World War.

Sitting in the York House audience, Twickenham I was recalibrating to this new historical index when I had to go again. 2026 replaced 2022.

Biking home, I realised both were right.

In 1976 the uncommon heat lasted months.

In 2022 the peak heat rocketed

In 2026, never as hot as four years earlier, five heatwaves did for us. By now 1976 was a lowly seventh for average summer mean temperatures.

Peaks and persistence of climate change became my way of understanding my life in climate.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Stories, stories, stories

David Shukman, former BBC Science Editor and now author of The Response, was the special guest. His book was being shared among Richmond councillors and their staff. He reminded me of the power of a compelling storyteller.

His stories, whatever the year, were vivid. The north London pensioner who nearly drowned in his own basement flat because of the rain. The firebreak that residents in east London didn’t want but which saved their homes. And his daughter-in-law’s difficult pregnancy through five heatwaves. Mother and baby survived

The UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) suggests we plan for 2°C and assess for 4°C which is why Shukman suggested there should be a National Emergency Shading Programme which should do everything we can that addresses risks to Schools, hospitals, homes of the the at risk.

We must do everything we can to stop the sunshine hitting the glass

He pointed to lots of cost solutions to this problem, echoing the CCC report in May, 2026.

In a throwaway line he also said every rain-garden should have a prominent sign saying,

This saves lives and homes

Second that.

Whilst Richmond council are sorting the sign, they might think about the planting, too.

Data, data, data

Data not dogma is always a welcome sign. At the Forum, Richmond council went further. It made clear both extremes and averages mattered.

2022 was the summer of the extreme peak. England reached 40.3°C, the highest temperature ever recorded here.

2026 was the summer of the high average. Its mean temperature across June, July and August was 16.5°C, a record. It had five heatwaves and 40 days above 30°C, beating the previous record of 34. Its peak was lower than 2022’s.

The council also shared two of its principal sources of information:

• Climate and Air pollution risk map

• DataRich

Each tells the same story. As one speaker put it,

.. climate risk is localised and unequal

This first image from the risk map shows the current risk of flooding: the darker the colour, the higher the risk. That linear park along Castelnau looks an even better idea.

This second image shows the risk of overheating

Clare O’Connor, Director Climate Policy & Communications explained these maps had been updated earlier this year and then used in earnest for the first time during the heatwaves.

They enabled the council to see where in the borough vulnerable lived, and target communications and support.

DataRich is the second data source about the borough.

If you’ve not seen this before,

DataRich is a free and open website designed so that users can easily access local data relevant to the London Borough of Richmond.

This site brings together a collection of data from nationally recognised sources, across several themes to provide a full overview of the borough and how it compares locally and nationally.

You can easily view and download data and create your own maps.

If Shukman reminded us of the power of narrative, this dataset made just as strong a case. Numbers and narrative have informed Barnes2050 since its launch. That is why there’ll be more about these resources.

Why does someone die?

We’ll soon know how many excess deaths were the result of the 2026 heatwaves. Shukman said the numbers will be ‘horrific’.

The difficulty, as during Covid’s lockdowns, is knowing whether the heat caused a death. Often there were underlying health problems, and the heat amplified them.

I am conscious that my formulation of the risk is simplistic: water destroys property, heat kills people. It contains a germ of truth, but the layers of reality wrapped around it need acknowledging. Shukman’s pensioner nearly drowned in his own home.

Richmond’s blue pride and joy

Community BlueScape is a hugely important programme for Richmond council, one of the partners alongside Barnes Common and WWT.

It is easy to lose sight of how much it has achieved. From Kitson Road to Barnes Green, our landscape has been improvedL nature harnessed to protect us.

The council are keen to learn from the main initiatives. A formal programme review has started and will be complete in 2027 with the programme now in its last six months.

De-paving is harder than the slabs it wants to replace

It turns out stopping people paving over their front gardens is harder than it looks.

The law for front gardens in England is reasonably clear. Planning permission is needed when more than five square metres is covered with traditional impermeable surfacing that doesn’t drain to a permeable area.

Except even that first part is complicated - size, assessing material. That’s before you get to the different rules for back gardens and patios, let alone enforcement.

Given the threat to Barnes SW13 from river and rain, letting every front and back garden to become a small soakaway seems a simple step. Maybe how common they are, or not, is a useful indicator of widespread preparedness for the climate to come.

Richmond council has pulled together all its work on climate change. The presentation pack from this Forum is available to download below.

261014 Lbrut Sustainability Forum

10.2MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

It is possible to quibble with the urgency, but Richmond council should be applauded for being clear about the direction of travel.

They take the climate emergency seriously.

They are trying a number of things and sharing what they know widely.

I was late to climate change, like most, but this feels materially different to 2016. I wonder whether, in ten years’ time, we will be talking about 2036 and 2032 the way we now talk about 2026 and 2022.

After all the Met Office said a summer like 2026 is now roughly a once-in-nine-years event, made around 130 times more likely by climate change. In a world 4°C warmer, a summer like 2026 would count as cool.

Explore more stories about our changing climate and what it could mean for Barnes and the rest of London by 2050.

For now this 0.6 mile stretch of tarmac remains a hostage in a political stalemate.

There remains three broad options for the future of Hammersmith Bridge:

The future of the Bridge should be clearer soon. The UK Government (UKG) is assessing a bid from Hammersmith & Fulham council to fund an active travel bridge using the Structures Fund. That decision is due before the end of 2026

Regardless of the decision, there is a pressing need to stimulate a public discussion about what this corridor should become if vehicles are not to be restored to Hammersmith Bridge.

That version of Hammersmith Bridge - whether for the short or longer term - unlocks potential change for the whole of the peninsula.

But its immediate impact would be on one of the most spectacular approaches in Barnes.

Castelnau could be so much more than a tarmac tribute to the last century.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

History of Castelnau

Castelnau today is recognised for its distinctive and historic character but it started as a connecting road called Upper Bridge Road between the then new Hammersmith Bridge and Barnes village. It was laid out across what had been flood-prone fields. This road was later named Castelnau, a name derived from the estate of a French Huguenot family, the Boileau family, who had settled in the area in the early 19th century. Major Charles Lestock Boileau, whose father had bought land locally, astutely acquired property along the new road and became the prime developer of Castelnau in the decades after the bridge’s opening.

By the late 20th century, Richmond council designated the Castelnau Conservation Area to protect the road’s distinctive townscape. This area was later extended in 1982, 1983, and 1991 to include surrounding sections such as Lonsdale Road.

The designation reflects the cohesive heritage of Castelnau: the grand early-Victorian villas, the avenue of mature trees and gardens. Dozens of individual buildings on Castelnau are statutorily listed by Historic England for their national importance.

The conservation rationale was to protect the road’s 19th-century layout and architecture, which together tell the story of Barnes’ mid-1800s urbanisation following the opening of the Bridge.

It was not to preserve the experience of tens of thousands of vehicles using it as a fast urban thoroughfare every day.

Castelnau’s development – from marshy fields, to a speculative Victorian villa avenue, to a busy 20th-century thoroughfare - is unfinished. It is time to consider how to restore this distinctive townscape in a 21st-century context.

The proposal

The central section of A306 between pub and church should become a new park.

Not a token verge. A proper, continuous green ribbon: trees, planting, paths, crossings, benches, shade. A living walkway from the north of Barnes.

Castelnau Park is part of a wider Manifesto for a better Barnes: a collection of ideas grounded in local insight, climate responsibility and a people-first approach.

You’ll find the full list of proposals, along with the thinking behind them, throughout this section.

Case for change

There are several strands to this argument:

• Political leaders must offer a credible alternative to set against one which sees cars restored to Hammersmith Bridge

• Planning for a post-car future is inherently valuable and should start as soon as possible

• The new park would make a pedestrian-first Barnes more plausible

• It would provide a boost to local Barnes retailers

• The park would allow more shade and seating on a key walking route

• A planted corridor would add soakaway capacity and surface-water resilience

Political leaders must present all alternatives

Politicians at local, regional and national level have spent six years suggesting the choice for Castelnau is between what you had or what you have.

2019 with over 20,000 cars roaring down Castelnau.

Or 2026 with a mile of largely unused A-road connecting to a Barnes road network that is also unchanged. This ‘limbo landscape’ south of the Bridge is part of a wider problem.

Politcal leaders have chosen to keep the roads empty without redesigning them for people. They have chosen to keep traffic signals working as if the vehicles are still there. They have chosen to make crossing the Thames harder for older residents and those with limited mobility. They have chosen to pretend this is an outcome rather than a pause.

This is not good enough.

Political leaders should be clear there are three options for Castelnau:

1. Flood with cars having restored them to Hammersmith Bridge

2. Maintain the current limbo landscape with no cars and no changes

3. Design a new urban landscape built around people. Castelnau Park is an attempt to do that.

Face with these real alternatives, Barnes residents make a measured decision as to how best use the area where they live.

Planning for a post-car future is inherently valuable

If the Bridge remains closed to private cars - by necessity or choice - what follows cannot be ‘empty tarmac forever’. It should trigger a redesign of the whole catchment area south of the river: how people move, where they cross, what the public realm feels like, how local access works, and what that means for local trade.

Designing a post-car Castelnau is not a minor undertaking. It is at least as complex as restoring vehicles to Hammersmith Bridge and that effort has consumed six years, with very little to show. So start thinking about the alternative now. Leaders need to help residents conjure what a car-free Bridge could offer. Some will never be persuaded, but most people will engage once the idea is explained honestly and treated as real.

Plans made through a long, open, properly argued process will be better and more credible. Begin now, and Castelnau Park should be ready by 2050.

Pedestrian-first Barnes

Walking is key to the future of transportation mix in Barnes and beyond.

Every tier of government wants more of it. Read Richmond council’s current transport strategy, the Mayor’s transport strategy, or the UK Government’s latest travel frameworks like CWIS3.

Bridged has already argued for a coherent pedestrian network on the peninsula including a spine that runs Thames to Thames. The BCA Travel Barnes proposal for a Mill Hill Road crossing would add another crucial spur.

Castelnau Park would extend that network, linking the Bridge to the area around the Olympic Studios area and so connecting two of Barnes’ four shopping parades.

Economic boost to Barnes retailiers

The walking economy is a powerful force. People spend, cars passing through at 30mph do not.

A linear park running south from the Bridge would funnel more people into Castelnau Parade and - crucially - encourage movement between Barnes’ parades rather than leaving them isolated as separate islands.

Nicki Maini is his survey of Hammersmith Bridge, talks about

Create the destination, invest in the approaches.

(Hammersmith & Fulham council, Richmond council and the Mayor of London) also need to invest in regenerating areas at either end: the retail outlets, cycling infrastructure, public realm upgrades, drainage improvements

(Maini’s blog post, Where did 25,000 vehicles go? is the clearest single account of the Hammersmith Bridge saga currently available)

By connecting to Castelnau to Church Road, the High Street and White Hart Lane, Barnes would be whole again. For everyone, not just drivers.

More shade and seating

Castelnau Park would also offer something sorely missing - shaded seating on a key pedestrian route.

That matters in a future where heat becomes more dangerous than we are culturally prepared to accept. Bridged has already made the point that Barnes’ anxieties about water, though rational, can distract from the rising risk of heat. Heat is more of a problem than rain, especially for our older residents.

Castelnau Park would provide shade, rest points, and a more forgiving microclimate: trees, planting, and seating designed for ordinary daily life in the mid twenty first century.

Another soakaway

Barnes is right to be water-aware. When high tide coincides with heavy rainfall, river communities face compound risk. Richmond council has captured that risk on its Climate and Air Pollution risk map. On the image below the darker the colour, the higher the risk of flooding.

That is the logic behind the Community BlueScapes and projects like the award-winning Kitson Road scheme. They remain focused on flood resilience, including recent winter preparedness updates such as this.

A planted median park is, in effect, a long soakaway. It would add permeable surface area and water-management capacity on a corridor currently dominated by impermeable hardscape.

Practical considerations

Linear parks are not a novelty; they are a known urban design pattern. Even very narrow ones work. Here are four parks which are less than 4m - or two SUVs - wide:

• Parkland Walk - Islington, London

• Precollinear Park - Turin, Itally

• Queens Boulevard Median Park - New York, USA

There are others such Gyeongui Line Forest Park in Seoul, South Korea which is wider in parts and follows an old rail corridor. Or Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway in Boston USA which is a linear park created by removing an elevated highway. Even the most famous linear park in the world, the High Line in New York City is relevant.

The point is not to copy any of these. Rather to show urban designers are capable of creating magical places that enhance the public realm. Castelnau is an opportunity is to add to the list of landmarks that make Barnes special - WWT, Thames Towpath and Barnes Green.

Castelnau also sits within a conservation area. That adds constraints, but it does not make change impossible; it simply raises the bar for design quality and evidence. In practice, it should be easier to make the case for a carefully designed park than for the return of high-volume motor traffic through a heritage townscape.

Is this idea bonkers? Possibly.

But nothing matches the madness of leaving a long, largely unused A-road as a tarmac memorial to political avoidance.

Bold ideas often look strange before they look obvious. Take them seriously even if you do not take them literally. If you have a better proposal to sit alongside a linear park—something that is deliverable, climate-aware, and improves daily life—send it to me.

Email Andy Conroy, the author

This proposal sits alongside other major proposals from Barnes2050:

• How Barnes might better use the Thames

• What a rejuvenated Terrace could become

• And unlocking this new version of Barnes, a permanently car-free Hammersmith Bridge.

Imagine living in south west London in 2050. Much will be familiar but we have the chance to make generational changes to make Barnes climate-ready whilst maintaining, if not improving, the quality of our life.

Bold ideas have benefitted Barnes for decades. So why not Castelnau Park?

Updates to this proposal

This proposal is a work in progress. It is reviewed on a regular basis.

The original version of this article was published on 02 January 2026.

It was last updated on 19 October 2026 to include the following:

• the latest on the UK Government’s Structures Fund

• Richmond council’s updated Climate and Air Pollution map.

Continue exploring: Use major renewal to build for the climate we are going to have

When Barnes gets a rare opportunity to renew infrastructure, it should build for the climate of the coming decades rather than the climate of the past.

More stories about using developments to make sure we are climate-ready.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Notes and thoughts

E-bikes are growing in popularity. More than 1.5 million hire e-bike journeys were made in Richmond borough in 2025.

This is good news for Barnes SW13, Richmond borough and London.

That is why Barnes2050 believes we should embrace the e-bike generation, starting with Gen Z.

That confidence does not mean turning a blind eye to three problems, all seen in Barnes:

• e-motos

• reckless riding

• anti-social parking
  

E-motos are not e-bikes

A legal e-bike, technically an electrically assisted pedal cycle has pedals, a motor with a maximum continuous rated power of 250 watts and electrical assistance which cuts out at 15.5 mph.

Some of the machines now being ridden on London’s streets look like e-bikes but are, in law, motor vehicles, sometimes called e-motos.

And they can be fast.

As Peter Walker put it in The Guardian,

As a cyclist I want the authorities to act with clarity. Lime bikes and renters can be annoying, but the true threat is those who dangerously flout the law.

Get this menace off our roads.

The Met has intensified enforcement. Putney Police recently tested 30 e-bikes and scooters near Putney High Street. They seized 19.

Reckless riding is a menace

Pedestrians are threatened by cyclists careering along the pavement. Other cyclists - including me - loathe seeing fellow riders ignore the red lights.

Anti-social parking should be the easiest to fix

But it will be hard. Made harder, according to the Mayor, because the UK government is taking too long introducing regulations for dockless e-bike schemes, with the rules not due to be in place until at least 2028.

Three different problems requiring three different solutions. None of the answers include fewer e-bikes.

I write this as part of the next e-bike generation, the Boomers, for whom battery support for a hill, or pulling away at a busy roundabout, is welcome relief.

A few days ago I celebrated 4,000 miles on my Volt e-bike in the three years since I ordered from their Milton Keynes factory.

The more useful e-bikes become, the more important it is that we deal with the things giving them a bad name.

Continue exploring: Embrace the e-bike generation

E-bikes could make many more local journeys practical and our younger residents happier if Barnes gives them the space to flourish.

More stories about encouraging e-bikes.

Barnes2050 collects these.

They are not predictions. They are nudges. Signals.

What might this mean for Barnes SW13? What can we learn from them? Which should we resist?

Here are selection of stories from September, the month the 2026 hot summer broke. They suggest climate adaptation, ageing infrastructure, transport transition and constrained local government are beginning to collide in Barnes.

The stories this month,

• Planet earth is on track to break 1.5ºC threshold

• Another London bridge might have to close

• Why buses are slowing across London

• The triple demon posed by e-bikes and what we might do about them

• The discussion about robotaxis moves being just about safety

• Richmond council’s walking and cycling strategy

• Once more Barnes might learn from Putney, this time for its future dock*

• Heathrow Airport’s expansion has a difficult month

• Leg O’Mutton - more natural landscape which will be used to protect Barnes from flooding

• Richmond council plans for losing over half of its core funding over the next four years

• Bitter sweet reflections on poverty in Barnes.

*Imagination, planning and approvals permitting

Let’s start with the climate.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Climate

Europe’s hottest summer on record. A collapsing glacier in Nepal. Wildfires and droughts and freakish storms around the world

That’s what 1.5 degrees Celsius in warming above preindustrial levels looks like. It’s a number I found difficult to wrap my head around until a climate expert explained it to me this way: Imagine your body temperature going up by 1.5 degrees. You feel unwell. Now imagine it rising by 2 degrees — you’re seriously ill.

New York Times (free link, gift) reports on the shift in political language from climate change to energy security as scientists warn the world is now likely to cross the 1.5ºC long-term warming threshold.

Meanwhile the Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, said in her state of the EU address said,

These were the hottest summer months ever - but probably the coolest of the years to come.

Science is clear.

Europe is warming at double the global rate.

Against that background, Prime Minister Andy Burnham recommitted to achieving Net Zero by 2050.

The effects of the 2026 heatwaves are being totted up.

BBC News created a simple tool to show how hot and dry was your summer. Enter a postcode and it tells the story. For Barnes SW13,

The average daily high during June, July and August was 26.8C, according to provisional Met Office data.

This is 4.2C above the long-term summer average between 1991 and 2020.

Your area had about 35 days above 28C, the local temperature threshold for a heatwave.

Each of the statements is backed by data and graphs.

For rainfall,

Approximately 90.6mm of rain fell in your area over three summer months.

This is roughly 38.6% below the long-term summer average between 1991 and 2020.

Meanwhile, Transport for London said the hot summer hit revenue. It turns out if if the tube and the bus networks are uncomfortably hot, people will stay at home or get on a e-bike instead.

Lea & Sanderson might feel better though. English winemakers are expecting a ‘vintage year’ but there’s no cheer for beer makers.

The reason to dwell on the experiences of 2026 is to make sure we learn from the experience. If all we do is heave sigh of relief and then move on to the next season, we will find in the same, or maybe a worse, position in 2027.

For Barnes, that makes shade, trees, cooler homes, water management and heat-resilient public transport increasingly look less like nice-to-haves and more like infrastructure.

And with that in mind, here is the forecast for Barcelona, Spain for the week ahead.

Remember, Barnes climate in 2050 could feel more like Barcelona’s today.

Infrastructure

Another London bridge might have to close.

Waterloo Bridge could be forced to close ‘within four years’ with major repairs needed, reported The Standard

An inspection of the bridge found water damage and cracks as wide as 2 millimetres (0.08 inches), Westminster City Council said in a funding-bid document which Bloomberg obtained in response to a Freedom of Information request.

The Londoner says,

Its near century-old stone frame, the reports suggest, is struggling to cope with years of heavy traffic and increasingly extreme weather (it’s amazing some of the unexpected ways climate change is having an impact, eh?)

So far familiar and increasingly alarming. Hammersmith Bridge, Albert Bridge and Vauxhall Bridge have already demonstrated how major London bridges can require expensive repairs, restrictions or closures..

Then comes two important riders.

The council are now asking for £6million to fund repairs.

And guess where they’ve turned for help? That’s right, the UK Government Structures Fund.

Transport

Buses

Excellent summary from The Guardian about why buses are slowing.

Research from Transport for London (TfL) suggests a 10% fall in speeds leads to a 6% drop in demand. Demand falls and bus services are consolidated. Reduced

At least the Mayor has confirmed every London bus driver’s cab will have air conditioning by 2027.

E-bikes

Another important part of the 2050 transport mix in Barnes - e-bikes - have come under further scrutiny in September.

A third of the 1,500 Forest e‑bikes in Richmond are to be fitted with identification plates in an attempt to track down cyclists in the event of an incident or parking issue, reports The Standard.

You can read about e-motos, reckless riding and anti-social parking here.

Resolve the illegal bikes. Punish the reckless and anti-social behaviour. And a deeper challenge with e-bikes remain: the redistribution of road space away from private cars and towards bus passengers, walkers, wheelers and yes, riders.

Robotaxis

It’s less obvious the scale and impact of robotaxis, or shared automated electronic vehicles, will be.

But September was a big month for discussion.

• Why the battle for London’s robotaxis is so important (Times, ££ Paywall). TLDR if they work here, they can work almost anywhere

• Wayve vehicles being used through Uber have been licensed by TfL as private-hire vehicles, although they still require safety drivers.

• TfL says no robotaxis have been approved by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency yet

When do they, it is possible we’ll be living through the Congestion Paradox.

This sounds like a third rate east European sci-fi movie. In fact the Department for Transport scenario modelling suggests highly automated driving could bring a 24% rise in road miles by 2050, with significant effects on congestion and road speeds.

AVs are unlikely to reduce urban congestion merely by entering the vehicle fleet. Until they reach sufficient scale and are shared, pooled and regulated, they may generate more traffic than their driving efficiency removes.

This infographic from Adam Tranter, BikeisBest explains the maths.

And that makes this a very Barnes question. Do robotaxis eventually replace parked private cars, buses and some journeys on foot or simply put more vehicles onto already crowded roads?

Walking and Cycling in Richmond borough

Richmond council agreed how they are going to create the next Walking and Cycling Strategy.

This will cover the five-year period of 2027 to 2032 and is one of the major works flowing from the council’s new Transport Strategy.

This work will feature regularly in the coming year.

For now, one key point is worth repeating. Recalling Richmond’s successes highlighted in the 2026 Healthy Streets Scorecard, Barnes2050 believes

Perhaps the next chapter in Richmond’s transport story is no longer about persuading people to walk and cycle.

Perhaps it is about building a borough that better reflects how people are already choosing to travel.

River services

Looking to the day when Barnes might enjoy a regular river bus service, there may be lessons from Putney available on how to build a new river dock.

Heathrow airport

Since the public consultation on the proposed third runway closed there have been at least three significant stories,

• Climate Change Committee says Heathrow expansion is not compatible with the UK’s Net Zero policy under current policies

• If approved, the projected opening of the third runway has slipped another four years, until 2039.

• Prime Minister Andy Burnham refused to back a third runway for Heathrow

Landscape

Richmond council approved a flood resilience project for Leg O’Mutton

This project is part of the Community BlueScapes initiative which uses nature-based solutions to improve flood resilience across the Beverley Brook catchment.

It has UK Government funding through DEFRA and is a partnership between between Richmond council, Barnes Common Ltd and WWT, the charity for wetlands and wildlife.

The Leg O’Mutton work will enable the lake to store surface water when heavy rainfall coincides with high Thames tides.

The council paper explained the particular nature of the flood risks facing Barnes.

Heavy rainfall can overwhelm the drainage system. High Thames tides can prevent Beverley Brook discharging into the river — ‘tide-lock’. High water levels can also prevent surface-water sewers from discharging, pushing rainwater back through road gullies.

In other words, several different systems can fail at once.

As the council paper puts it,

These interactions mean that the highest risk of flooding in the area occur during heavy rainfall events that coincide with high tide. This was memorably demonstrated in July 2021, where the Barnes Green area was most affected and areas of North Barnes also flooded.

This is what climate adaptation looks like at the hyperlocal level: not simply preparing for more rain, but understanding how rain, rivers, tides, drains and landscape interact in one particular place.

Greater London Authority (GLA) have published a detailed tree map of London showing that without further climate mitigation and adaptation, more than 72% of London’s current public realm tree population may struggle under future climatic conditions.

These are the detailed reports for Barnes ward and Mortlake and Barnes Common ward.

The allotment-lover in me was taken by a Hackney council initiative called Right to Grow, which gives residents the chance to repurpose suitable council land into community growing spaces for fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers.

Maybe Castelnau Park should be a collection of allotments and growing beds?

Governance

Councillor Jim Millard, Deputy Leader and Finance and Resources Lead Member, introduced the council-wide Transformation Programme. This is the centre piece of the council’s challenge of a £29 million annual cut to core funding over three years. This is over half of its core funding and the largest percentage reduction in London.

The reduction follows a change to the way the UK Government funds English councils. The new system directs more money towards places judged to have greater need and less ability to raise money locally.

That creates winners and losers. London boroughs including Richmond, Wandsworth and Westminster are among the losers partly because the new formula assumes greater ability to raise revenue locally.

Their costs, however, have not disappeared.

Social care, housing, SEND, waste collection, streets and parks still have to be paid for and many costs are rising.

The result: less government funding, rising costs and sizeable holes in council budgets. Richmond council’s full response is here.

This new programme aims to deliver £39 million in annual savings by its fourth year and focuses on prevention, early intervention, better use of technology, streamlining processes, and optimising assets.

Across the borders other London councils are having to cope with the effect of this UK Government decision

• Hammersmith and Fulham council says it warns it may have to increase council tax by 150% to maintain current services, reports The Guardian

• Wandsworth council plans to nearly double council tax from April 2027. This report from PutneyNews explains the background to this decision.

Lifestyle

Child poverty

A bitter sweet chart to end this summary of September that offers us a glimpse of the future.

The Trust for London has produced a new way to unearth data about who lives in the capital’s 75 parliamentary constituencies.

London’s Poverty Constituency Tracker allows you to compare how London’s constituencies compare across living standards, health, education, employment and more.

This first chart shows the number of children in poverty by London constituency. Barnes is in Richmond Park, the yellow bar in the far right corner.

A bitter sweet result.

Here’s the detailed map for Richmond Park. The distribution is probably what should be expected: even relatively wealthy parts of Greater London have inhabitants who struggle to make ends meet ,and that hardship is unevenly spread.

Which of these stories will matter in five years?

Most weak signals disappear. A few turn out to have been early glimpses of something much bigger.

The useful thing is to notice them.

You can read back-issues of this take on the recent news relevant to future Barnes here.

Growing up, my relationship with Manchester was defined by sport, especially cricket. My first visit to a Test Match was to see the West Indies at Old Trafford.

Fast forward thirty years and I managed an R&D team in Salford, Greater Manchester. I am proud of the small role I played in making MediaCity UK a successful regeneration project.

And there’s that word.

Regeneration.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

I heard it a lot during two days spent at Making Active Places in Manchester.

This was Active Travel England’s first annual get-together: sharing knowledge and best practice across transport and placemaking. Trains, trams, walking, buses, wheeling and bikes. Heidi Alexander MP, Secretary of State for Transport, Chris Boardman CBE, Steve Coogan, Dame Sarah Storey and hundreds of delegates.

Throughout the conference, two words kept cropping up.

Regeneration and Burnham.

I get it.

‘Mayor Andy’ was named-checked by all those who represented any aspect of Greater Manchester. As they should. Manchester is vibrant. There’s renewal everywhere you look. The conference itself was held on the site of the former Granada Studios complex that gave us World In Action, Coronation Street and Stars in their Eyes. (Showing my age?)

The scale of change across the city is eye-popping. Just one of the projects featured will deliver 15,000 homes over the next 20 years.

This roll call of regeneration projects got me thinking.

What do you call change in a place like Barnes SW13?

Barnes is not going to be regenerated.

Renewed? Perhaps. But that feels corporate-bland.

Evolution? Closer, but still uninspiring. That’s not destined for a t-shirt.

Maybe I was looking for the wrong sort of word. Instead of trying to name the eventual consequences of change, perhaps I needed to describe how we should approach it.

Let’s workshop this

The conference offered an irresistible opportunity to try out some language.

I generated a long list of phrases and dropped different ones into conversations over the two days. Sometimes I shared photographs from my iPhone. Barnes Pond, The Terrace, e-bikes crossing Hammersmith Bridge, Castelnau and the High Street.

I started with something I’ve used on this journal before,

Barnes is brilliant but not finished.

That landed well, as did others,

A better Barnes, still Barnes.

Same Barnes. New possibilities.

Barnes changes. Barnes remains.

These four were the best received out of the twenty. But two other phrases produced something more interesting than comprehension and approval. They provoked conversations.

Barnes wasn’t always like this

The first of these phrases only really made sense to two people at the conference. Both were from London. Both understood immediately the issue I was getting at.

Talk about changing Barnes and sooner or later someone will say,

But it’s lovely already. Why change it?

It is a fair challenge. My go-to answer has become,

Barnes wasn’t always like this.

It sounds like a warning. I mean it as reassurance. The phrase was prompted by online promotion for an upcoming talk at Fish. The speaker wanted to talk about stewardship. The point was simple: the Barnes we value today is itself the product of human intervention, some of it dating back centuries.

People built houses. Laid out roads. Dug and shaped landscapes. Built a railway. Put up a bridge. Created shops, schools and public spaces. And later generations changed them again.

Fortunately for us, more often than not, they got enough right to leave us a place worth caring about.

Barnes did not arrive finished.

Nor is preserving everything exactly as it is necessarily the same thing as stewardship. Change is not the opposite of stewardship. Part of stewardship is deciding what should change and what should not.

Same Barnes. Different futures.

The second phrase was less about Barnes and more about how Barnes2050 might help,

Same Barnes. Different futures.

Barnes2050 wants to change how we talk about the next two decades. Not by offering a single grand vision of Barnes in 2050. Certainly not by pretending to know exactly what will happen.

Instead, I want to make different plausible futures easier to imagine and the choices between them harder to ignore.

Hammersmith Bridge alone could return Barnes to an old pattern of movement or become the starting point for a different one. Similar choices await us over housing, the Thames, public space and an ageing population.

None comes with only one possible answer.

Same Barnes means strengthening what makes Barnes distinctive without tipping into nostalgia.

That distinctiveness is not a constraint on change. It is the platform for it: the confidence to try different futures, and to choose a different path when the old one no longer works.

Manchester spent two days talking about regeneration. Barnes does not need an equivalent word. It needs is a better way of talking about change.

Same Barnes. Different futures.

Merch, anyone?

It occupies public space. And, increasingly, quite a lot of it.

Much of Barnes2050’s thinking about designing Barnes SW13 for people first, not cars has focused on movement around the peninsula: Hammersmith Bridge, School Streets and pedestrian pop-ups.

But there is another question:

What about cars when they aren’t moving?

A change introduced by Bath & North East Somerset Council offers one answer.

You could call it an ‘SUV charge’.

But it is better than that.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

How much?

Bath now asks two questions about a resident’s car when calculating the price of a parking permit:

How much does it pollute?

How much street space does it occupy?

The first establishes the baseline price. Bath doesn’t simply distinguish between electric, petrol and diesel cars. The charge rises through a series of CO₂ bands: the more CO₂ a car emits, the higher the starting price. Diesel cars pay a further premium because of their impact on local air quality.

Then comes something more interesting.

Bath calculates the physical footprint of the car, its length multiplied by its width, using manufacturer’s measurements and including its extended mirrors.

Small cars get a discount. Bigger cars pay progressively more for their first permit.

An enormous electric car can pay more than a small electric car, even though neither produce exhaust emissions.

A second car attracts no small-car discount and a much larger size charge. Bath is putting a price on multiple-car ownership as well as pollution and size.

In case you are wondering, Bath says Blue Badge holders living in an affected area are entitled to a free permit and aren’t affected by these size charges.

Why is Bath doing this?

The council’s argument for these changes isn’t primarily climate-related. It’s about street space and safety,

To support public health and the safety of pedestrians, we already link the cost of parking permits to a vehicle’s emissions.

By also linking permit costs to the size of a vehicle, we encourage ownership of smaller vehicles that reduce risks for pedestrians and cyclists.

There is a reason this is becoming an issue. Cars have been getting bigger, says the council, and these bigger cars more popular,

SUVs became the most popular car type in the UK in 2024, accounting for over 60% of all new car sales, a significant increase from less than 50% in 2020.

Bigger cars consume more road and kerb space. They can make it harder to see and be seen. Their greater size and weight can also increase the consequences of a collision with someone walking or cycling.

Bath’s answer is to put a price on both costs: pollution and occupation.

How does this works in practice?

The easiest way to understand the policy is with actual cars.

Start with three electric vehicles.

All three begin with Bath’s basic £120 emissions charge because none produces CO₂ from its exhaust. What changes the final price is their size.

That is a £67 difference between two zero-emission cars simply because one occupies considerably more street space.

Same emissions. Different footprint. Different price.

Now turn the experiment around.

Take these three BMW models with almost exactly the same physical footprint: an electric iX1, petrol X1 and diesel X1.

Their size charge is essentially the same, at about £28.

This time what changes the price of the parking permit is pollution.

In this case the £38 price difference is caused by exhaust emissions.

Same footprint. Different exhaust emissions. Different price.

Put the two examples together and Bath’s system becomes surprisingly simple:

Bigger cars pay more.

More polluting cars pay more.

If your car is both, you pay more for both.

Notes and thoughts

This feels particularly relevant to Barnes.

A people-first approach is not simply about making it easier to walk or cycle. It also requires us to ask a more awkward question:

How much public space does your car consume?

That matters in Barnes with its frequently narrow streets, constrained kerb space and high levels of car ownership.

A parked car is, after all, private property occupying public land.

Bath has decided that the price of doing this should partly reflect the nature of that occupation.

Barnes2050 agrees.

That is why it supports an SUV parking charge. Bath has devised something more sophisticated: a charge that distinguishes between the pollution a vehicle produces and the space it consumes.

That is a better model.

Political leadership

Bath consulted the public before introducing the change. The size-based proposal was not universally popular, but neither does the evidence suggest overwhelming opposition.

The consultation attracted 490 responses; 50% supported it and 44% opposed it.

There’s also a lively Bath Reddit discussion which is also not representative but useful.

• Several highly upvoted comments strongly welcomed charging larger vehicles more because of space, safety and environmental impacts.

• Others thought the additional sums were too small to change car-buying behaviour.

• There were also objections from people saying they genuinely need larger vehicles — including one commenter describing needing a wheelchair-accessible vehicle.

Bath & North East Somerset Council, which has a Liberal Democrat majority, went ahead.

Between now and 2050, local politicians will encounter repeated opportunities to make decisions that may initially feel unfamiliar but which help places adapt to a changing climate.

This is one of them.

Richmond council should learn from its political colleagues in Bath and introduce a similar system across the borough.

If - when? - they do, they can return the favour by sharing their design of an ease to use online application form. The Bath council website is (unnecessarily) bad.

Is the price high enough?

This is where things become more interesting.

Our two electric examples suggest a Fiat 500e would cost roughly £110 a year to park, compared with about £177 for a Lotus Eletre.

Would someone spending £85,000 on a luxury electric car choose something smaller because the residents’ permit costs an additional £67 a year?

Perhaps not.

The difference may simply be too small to alter car-buying behaviour. Early discussion of the policy in Bath has raised exactly this issue. But that does not necessarily make the policy meaningless.

It establishes a principle: the amount paid for storing private property on a public street can reflect how much of that street the property consumes.

The model may prove more powerful than the price signal currently attached to it.

That deserves another story.

So does an even more fundamental question,

what should it cost to occupy a piece of public street in Barnes for a year?

My space in a bike hangar costs me nearly £72 annually. A residents’ car-parking permit can cost less, £68.50 in some Richmond control parking zones.

I have no beef with paying to store my bicycle there. The hangar has to be installed and maintained.

The interesting question is the other way round.

Why is storing a car on public land so cheap?

That is for later.

For now, Bath has done something worth watching.

It has begun to put a price not only on what a car emits, but on the space it occupies.

Continue exploring: Designing Barnes for people first, not cars

Barnes should be shaped around people living, working, playing and belonging, not chiefly around the movement and storage of cars.

More stories about designing Barnes for people first, not cars.

The London Assembly agrees. The Green Party supports the idea. As of August 2025, Richmond’s Liberal Democrat-led council does not. Bath council in the west country, also boasting a Liberal Democrat super majority, has implemented such a scheme.

This proposal is part of a wider Manifesto for a better Barnes: a collection of ideas grounded in local insight, climate responsibility and a people-first approach. You’ll find the full list of proposals, along with the thinking behind them, throughout this section.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Growth in SUV sales

Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) are now the best-selling type of new car in the UK. Along with 4x4s and they make up nearly a third of all cars on the road.

What’s more, like most cars they’re growing in size. Cars sold in the UK are growing in size by an average of 1cm every two years. The Vauxhall Corsa has widened by 24cm since its debut. The Ford Fiesta is 19cm broader than it was in 1989, while the Nissan Qashqai is 6cm wider than it was in 2008. This phenomenon—known as car bloat or carspreading—is not an accident. It’s market-driven, and councils have yet to catch up.

SUV’s pose a particular challenge, then. Their importance, growing popularity and size means action is needed now.

Why SUVs should pay more to park?

SUVs pose several threats to our environment. SUVs are different from smaller cars in ways that matte especially in a borough like Richmond. Additional car parking fees are one way to disincentives ownership or compensate for their use. The main problems:

• They take up more space

• They wear out roads faster

• They’re more dangerous to people walking and cycling

• They produce more carbon emissions

• They pollute more through tyres and brakes

This particular charge is useful, more generally, as

• Disincentive to private car ownership

• Strengthening the polluter-pays principle

They take up more space

Most SUVs are too big for Richmond borough’s 1.8m standard parking bays. A record 1,200,000 cars wider than 1.8 metres were sold last year. Many SUVs are now 2m wide.

This affects residents in different ways.

Let’s start with other car owners. SUVs demand to a larger proportion of all the available car parking. Given the growth in the sales, it is expected this problem will become even worse. CleanCities reports,

.. cities expected to lose 8.5-14% of on-street parking by 2040 if the (car spreading) trend continues unchecked.

London and Berlin are each predicted to lose about 100,000 parking spaces.

The pedestrians suffer too. In an area with so many Victorian streets, the SUVs jut into pavements, hampering pedestrians. When the space doesn’t fit the car, it’s the street that loses and in particular the people who walk on them.

The best way to address this challenge is to design Barnes around people first, not cars, a principle key to how Barnes2050 believes the next generation of this area should developed.

They damage roads faster

SUVs can weigh 30% more than a standard car, putting extra pressure on residential roads not designed for them.

The Times reported,

The damage done by a vehicle to a road surface is proportional to the fourth power of its axle weight — a principle used to describe the relationship between axle load and damage to the road surface.

Using the formula, a two-tonne SUV does 16 times more damage than a one-tonne car.

Councils foot the bill for repairs; SUV owners should too.

SUVs are more dangerous

SUVs sit higher, with bulkier front ends and larger blind spots. That makes collisions with pedestrians and cyclists both more likelyand more deadly.

Road safety data backs this up: the bigger the car, the greater the harm. Put another way, a child struck by an SUV is 82% more likely to die than if hit by a smaller car.

SUVs produce more carbon emissions

Even newer models of SUVs emit more CO₂ than mid-sized cars. Richmond Greens said

Petrol and diesel SUVs burn around 20% more fuel than medium cars

Indeed as reported earlier this year by the BBC,

If ranked among countries, the global fleet of SUVs would be the world's fifth largest emitter of CO2, exceeding the emissions of Japan and various other major economies.

SUV shed more toxic particles through tyres and brakes

Weight matters not just for fuel, but for friction. Heavier vehicles wear down tyres and brakes faster, releasing microscopic particles into the air. That kind of invisible pollution worsens asthma and enters our lungs and our children’s.

Disincentives against private cars

Richmond council says it wants fewer private cars and trips. But its policies tell a different story, the ‘car credibility gap’. Today, SUV owners pay no more to park than those with smaller, cleaner vehicles. That’s a missed opportunity. A stiffer car parking charge for SUVs would have a significant impact because they form such a large part of the borough’s private fleet of vehicles.

Price makes a difference. When cities raise parking charges, people drive less or park for shorter periods. In London, one study found that car trips into the centre dropped sharply when the Congestion Charge was introduced and fell even more when parking costs were added to the mix.

National research shows that when councils raise parking prices, demand usually falls. The effect varies by place, but the average change is big enough to matter.

Strengthen polluter pays principle

Richmond borough has the second highest level of consumption in London. We buy a lot of things. That is a function of the borough’s relative wealth. As we adjust our behaviours to reduce emissions - a Richmond council priority - a wider adoption of ‘polluter pays’ is the logical foundation for any disincentives in support of this ambition.

Practical considerations

SUVs are getting bigger with every passing year, creating congestion, taking up limited space on our pavements and streets as well as adding to road danger.

A smarter approach to parking charges isn’t just good policy. It’s a necessary step toward cleaner air, safer streets, and a better public realm.

Let’s put our kerbs to better use.

Barnes2050 has identified contested kerbs as one of the key trends through to 2050. Traditionally the preserve of cars, it is clear there are other often socially more useful uses. Removing some of the SUVs occupying vital space on our streets would make a meaningful contribution to that change.

Richmond pioneered emissions-based parking charges 20 years ago. In the short term the council should revert to that approach. And rejoin the other 20 London boroughs who do this.

Meanwhile, with one eye on a growing EV fleet, the council should investigate ways of shifting to a combination of size and weight. Again they do not need to work alone: they should act in concert with other boroughs starting with Liberal Democrat colleagues in Bath.

This proposal is a work in progress.

It will be reviewed and improved on a regular basis.

It was first published on 05 August, 2025.

It was updated on Thursday 17 September 2026 to include the link to lessons from Bath & North East Somerset Council as well as the relevant parts of the Barnes2050 Manifesto. Several other smaller stylistic changes were made to the presentation to bring into line with the evolving house-style.

You can find all the current proposals listed here.

There’s more about the principle to design Barnes around people first, not cars.

And if you want to know what role parking reform played in reclaiming the streets of Paris, you should try this video report.

Big Barnes Ponder has left an indelible mark on Barnes SW13 over the past decade, all for the better.

I support it, unequivocally.

So why am I writing this?

My answer begins in October 2023.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Ponder 1: What I missed — and what I learned

I wasn’t part of the first Barnes Ponder, run by the Barnes Community Association (BCA) from 2013 onward. I say ‘missed’ because I hadn’t grasped the scale of what others had been doing.

Yes, I saw, felt and enjoyed the changes: the new High Street scheme, the Suffolk Road playground, the parklet, open-air events on Barnes Green, the 22 bus campaign, re-routing of the 378, the rickshaw, the defibrillator phone box, the 20mph campaign, the Barnes Day Out project, the shop-local initiative and the murals.

Another version of the BCA’s blog includes a sentence that struck me,

Placemaking lies at the heart of the transformation — benefitting the whole community and drawing visitors .. year-round.

Placemaking. I’ll return to that.

Ponder 2: The reboot

The BCA Ponder team decided to reboot the project for a second cycle. This presentation even without the commentary explains that process

By the time of the ‘Town Team Meeting’ meeting in October 2023 the co-ordinating group had bundled a subset of the proposals into six thematic workstreams - One Barnes, High Streets Barnes, Placemaking Barnes, Safer Barnes, Green Barnes and Travel Barnes.

Progress continues.

A disclosure: I’m a BCA member. I happily pay my £18 a year. I helped with the traffic team at the 2024, 2025 and 2026 Barnes Fairs. I also offered my time for Ponder 2.

Notes and thoughts

Three impressions from that October 2023 meeting stayed with me:

• Don’t mention the Bridge

• Computer says no

• Back to basics, at least for me

Hammersmith Bridge was the elephant in the room. It came up as a joke, repeatedly. Everyone knew we could spend hours discussing and disagreeing, so, without saying as much, we avoided the topic. Like Brexit before, the Bridge was the unspoken B-word.

The Ponder team, understandably, concluded they had no real influence over the decision, and so chose not to engage with it. Ponder time should be focussed on the things that could be addressed. The right call.

But I wanted to talk about the Bridge.

I knew people in the room had strong, opposing views. I wanted to hear them and try to understand them. The BCA’s thoughtful report, published a year after motor traffic stopped crossing, captured the complexity well.

I wasn’t interested only in the mechanics. I wanted to explore what it might mean if the Bridge never reopened to private cars. What would that imply for Barnes? For the wider area?

That question has since become less hypothetical. But the more interesting question was always larger: what kind of place might Barnes become if we stopped treating the old pattern of movement as the inevitable one?

That interests in how an urban area works probably makes me as much urbanist as a placemaker.

Another memory: frustration. Not with the Ponder team. But in the room from people who deal with others when trying to make things happen. Sometimes it is silence from businesses; sometimes from government bodies. Transport came up a lot, particularly buses and rail.

I understand why this is off-putting. But this has been my life for over twenty years . I am drawn to these seemingly intractable ideas.

Ask some of the many (so many) financial professionals in Barnes about patient capital and they will assume you are talking about long term investment. But there is another kind: the intellectual and social capital required to stay with an idea that is initially rejected by your peers.

My public service experience shows it can take years, sometimes more than a decade, for radical ideas become reality.

Finally, I remember listening. To more than a hundred thoughtful, impressive residents. I felt out of my depth. A novice. I realised I held untested opinions. I needed to go back to basics. Build my own case, from the ground up.

I’ve done this before. I find that journey from not knowing to some understanding, intellectually and emotionally rewarding.

Where do I stand?

Ponder and Barnes2050 are walking the same ground, but sometimes looking towards different horizons.

Ponder is largely concerned with what can be improved now, working through local knowledge, voluntary effort and the institutions that already exist. It turns ideas into practical action. Barnes would be poorer without it.

Barnes2050 takes a longer view. It looks for signals of change already visible, imagines several possible futures and asks what choices made now might lead towards one rather than another.

The difference is not simply radical versus practical. Nor is it Ponder versus Barnes2050. It is partly a difference of method and timescale.

Ponder generally works within the constraints Barnes has inherited. Barnes2050 is more inclined to ask whether those constraints will, or should, still govern the place in 2050.

Cars are the clearest example. Ponder’s transport work understandably looks for achievable improvements within a place where high car ownership and use remain facts of life. They are making progress.

Barnes2050 starts with a different question: what happens if we design Barnes for people first, not cars?

That does not mean no vehicles. It means fewer unnecessary car journeys, better alternatives and public space that does not automatically put the movement and storage of private cars first.

That question has led in several directions. The disappearance of thousands of journeys after Hammersmith Bridge stopped carrying motor traffic challenged forecasts of permanent traffic chaos. Asking what happened to those journeys produced evidence about disappearing cars.

Accepting that some people cannot comfortably walk or cycle across the Bridge led to the idea of a lightweight public-transport connection. That developed into considerations about a different sort of Barnes bus and a possible Hammersmith Bridge pod pilot.

The method has become clearer too: observe, interpret, imagine. Look for evidence. Make the possibility tangible. Then test new thinking with purpose, accepting that some ideas will fail or change.

This remains ambitious. I may not have a role in achieving much of it. I’m still learning. Others are already doing important work. I may be late to the conversation. But if the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second-best time remains now.

And I want to do all this while helping Ponder improve the Barnes we already have.

One works patiently on the inherited place. The other asks what that place might need to become.

Yes, and…

Updates to this page

The first version of this story was published on 09 April 2025. You can read it here.

The story was updated on 15 September 2026 to reflect the following:

• The original defined the distinction between Ponder and this project too narrowly, with cars figuring prominently. Since spring 2025, Barnes2050 has developed beyond transport. It is now more clearly about taking the long view, reading signals, imagining alternative futures and developing ideas that conventional civic processes may have little room to accommodate.

• The original story only implied Barnes2050’s method. The project now has a recognisable discipline: observe, interpret, imagine; connect trends, visions, principles and proposals; then test ideas in public.

• The contrast with Ponder was too binary. This change reflects the evolution of my thinking, not any change in the position of the BCA. Ponder concentrates mainly on improving Barnes within today’s constraints. Barnes2050 also asks whether those constraints will, or should, still govern the place in 2050, and what Barnes may need to become.

Barnes will change. The question is not whether change happens, but what criteria we use when choosing among competing changes. So far, the principles have said we should design Barnes for people first, not cars; prioritise getting buses and vans moving; embrace the e-bike generation; and test new thinking with purpose, regularly.

As the Barnes2050 Manifesto develops, these principles will inform the proposals to help Barnes, place and people, thrive and be climate-ready by 2050.

Barnes doesn’t get many opportunities to rebuild things from scratch. When one comes along, we should build for the climate we are going to have, not the climate we used to have.

We’re talking about you, Hammersmith Bridge. But not just you.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Principle 5 - Use local renewal to build for the climate we are going to have

London’s development from the Romans onwards is a story of incremental change. Accumulation not re-invention.

There was no grand reset like Paris under Haussman or Rotterdam after the Second World War. Take the the Great Fire of 1666. Grand reconstruction plans by Wren and others were rejected and London was largely rebuilt on its existing street pattern.

Re-use, rebuild, retrofit is the London story.

But there are moments when enormous change happens locally. Between now and 2050, Barnes needs to seize those opportunities and build with one eye on the climate to come.

As the UK’s Climate Change Committee has made clear, we need to start adapting to the climate we are now expecting. So much of the discussion in the UK is about cutting emissions. We also urgently need to look at how our homes, schools and public spaces cope with the climate already coming.

Barnes has form.

Look at the WWT Wetland Centre. A stunning re-purposing of four Victorian reservoirs, a substantial piece of Barnes. The choice was to turn them into a vast green-and-blue space rather than more intensive development.

The Wetland Centre opened in 2000. Today it is difficult to imagine Barnes without it. The benefits go beyond biodiversity. The centre attracts between 170,000 and 250,000 visitors annually, supporting the local economy too.

It is a reminder that decisions made when land becomes available can shape Barnes for generations.

Two live developments are worth calling out to which this principle must apply.

The first is the overhaul of the Vine Road Recreation Ground. Barnes2050 has argued that key is the Eco-Community Hub, a proposed climate refuge for anyone in Barnes SW13 in the event of extreme heat or flooding. An example of building for the climate we are about to have.

Further north Hammersmith Bridge is presenting a related opportunity. For more than seven years, it has been open to pedestrians and cyclists but not general motor traffic.

Even if the UK government changes its mind and decides to fund the restoration of the Bridge to vehicles, we will have lost a wonderful opportunity if we simply recreate what was there before: more than 20,000 vehicle crossings a day.

Keeping the Bridge primarily for walking, cycling and other low-emission transport would use one of Barnes’s rare infrastructure renewals to help reduce transport emissions. Vine Road asks the other half of the climate question: how do we prepare Barnes for the effects of climate change that are already coming?

We need to do both.

The key is being honest about the climate we are going to have. The Met Office have provided a useful guide.

Or we could just look at Barcelona today.

Continue exploring: Use major renewal to build for the climate we are going to have

When Barnes gets a rare opportunity to renew infrastructure, it should build for the climate of the coming decades rather than the climate of the past.

More stories about using developments to make sure we are climate-ready

Barnes will change. The question is not whether change happens, but what criteria we use when choosing among competing changes. So far, the principles have said we should design Barnes for people first, not cars; prioritise getting buses and vans moving; and embrace the e-bike generation.

As the Barnes2050 Manifesto develops, these principles will inform proposals intended to help Barnes, place and people, thrive and be climate-ready by 2050.

Some ideas will work. Some won’t. The problem is finding out which before spending too much money, causing too much disruption or making something difficult to reverse.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Principle 4 - Test new thinking with purpose, regularly

Choosing an idea is one thing. Finding out whether it actually works is another.

Richmond council has a structured approach to trials. Look at its management of the Barnes Primary School Streets. Barnes Primary is operating under an Experimental Traffic Order with baseline monitoring, consultation and subsequent review before a decision to amend, remove or make the scheme permanent.

Barnes already experiments. We just don’t necessarily think of these things as experiments. A School Street, a Parklet and an extraordinary flood-resilient road look like completely different projects. But they share something: try something, observe what happens, learn, decide what comes next.

Kitson Road is the definition of modest radicalism. Could it be any more Barnes? Richmond’s first fully permeable public road, stores more than 100 cubic metres of water beneath the surface and is intended to reduce flood risk to 25 properties. It was explicitly delivered as a trial through Community BlueScapes.

Some residents will struggle with this way of managing change. Sometimes things can look a mess. Think of those garish signs and temporary traffic lights littering the landscape. Trials can force people to change long-held habits. Even a temporary structure can be disruptive, especially annoying if the trial proves the idea doesn’t work.

But that is the beauty of this approach.

Better to find out something is not working as planned having spent a few thousand pounds rather than few hundred thousand or a million. Better a few temporary sandbags and road-signs than permanent changes to the hard-landscape.

Proponents of change need to be honest going into a trial. A trial isn’t simply a temporary version of something you have already decided to do. They need to accept something wont work as they hoped.

Maybe closing part of The Terrace for the Boat Race is daft. Maybe the service challenges will be too much for the proposed BHELT pods.

They also need to be clear how the trial will be judged. A successful trial will gather useful information so the planned change can be improved. The trial itself will alert more people to what might be ahead.

After twenty years practising this approach professionally, on projects large and small, I have become a firm believer in testing ideas before committing to them. Not because every trial works, but because you nearly always learn something when it doesn’t.

Barnes cannot know in 2026 which ideas will prove right for 2050. Nor should it wait until it does. Try things. Decide beforehand what success looks like. Learn from what happens.

Keep what works. Change what doesn’t.

Continue exploring: Test new thinking purposefully, regularly

Barnes should trial is now ideas before implementing them, learn from the results and adapt accordingly.

More stories about testing new thinking purposefully.

Next, using local renewal to build for the climate we can expect.

Barnes will change. The question is not whether change happens, but what criteria we use when choosing among competing changes. So far, the principles have asked who is Barnes’ public space actually for and pointed out that not all traffic is equally useful.

As the Barnes2050 Manifesto develops you’ll see how these principles inform the proposals for helping Barnes - place and people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050.

The next principle would have been unimaginable at the turn of this century.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Principle 3: Embrace the e-bike generation

Tell a Barnes resident 25 years ago that one day, he or she would see hundreds of e-bikes in Barnes every day. Pelotons regularly cruising along Church Road heading to and returning from work. Clusters of first light, then dark, hire bikes parked on spare pavement corners. Friday crowds heading on two wheels over Hammersmith Bridge to the riverside pubs.

Well, you would have been laughed at. The word ‘lycra’ would have featured prominently

And it’s not just Barnes. Some 1.5 million hire e-bike journeys were made in Richmond in 2025.

The rise of the e-bike is remarkable. ‘Boris bikes’ started in July 2010, Lime bikes in 2018 although they didn’t reach Richmond until 2021

E-bikes have a particular appeal to younger adults , including Gen Z. Born between 1997 and 2012 , they are amongst the biggest renters. A Department for Transport Survey found 16% of the 13-24 age group used them.

You might call them the e-bike generation.

This makes sense.

Younger people may use e-bikes because they’re cheap, convenient, fun, fast in London, don’t require parking, work well with public transport; or because they don’t own cars. Probably some mixture.

For the rest of us there’s a bigger prize. This is the chance to shift the thinking of a generation away from ‘cars as default’.

If we could do that, fewer vehicles might follow. After all, every person who opts for an e-bike rather than a car leaves a little more room on the road for essential vehicles.

This might be happening. The e-bike demographic extends beyond Gen Z. Lime says its average London rider in 2024 was 34. These Millennials were among the first to enjoy the thrill of zooming into town on a bike. They have stuck with it.

Barnes2050 believes there will be another e-bike generation by 2050. Again, you can see this trend emerging in the data. Boomers (cough) are renting and buying e-bikes. It’s not just the health benefits: they are ‘a miracle pill for older adults’. The pedal assist is welcome even on the gentlest slopes, such as those you find in Barnes.

This increasingly important form of transportation could change the nature of Barnes. And in doing so it might influence the make-up of the population.

Barnes has an ageing population. That makes it even more important to pay attention to how younger generations are already choosing to travel.

Good planning should look forward. We should design, at least in part, around the habits of the people who will inhabit that future, not just those whose habits formed decades ago.

If we want younger people to build their lives in Barnes, our streets should increasingly reflect the ways they already move: walking, cycling, e-bikes and public transport. The transport system could help create tomorrow’s population and community.

More e-bikes have downsides. This has to be managed. Barnes2050 believes this a transition cost.

The UK spent more than 12 years demanding that new cars be preceded by someone carrying a red flag, and another 18 before the rules were truly relaxed. New forms of mobility arrive messily. Regulation, infrastructure and social norms take time to catch up.

By 2050 - ideally much sooner - we will have sorted out anti-social parking

We know from the experience in Amsterdam, a city can change how it moves. It became car-dominated and then deliberately reversed course.

That process has started elsewhere in London. The City recorded 139,000 cyclists a day in October 2024, nearly twice as many cycles as cars and over half the peak-hour traffic.

What looks normal in Barnes in 2050 may be just as surprising to us as today’s e-bike-filled streets would have been 25 years ago. The difference is that this time we can see the change coming.

Today’s teenagers will be the middle-aged residents, parents and workers of Barnes in 2050. Rather than expect them to inherit our habits, we should be designing partly for the way they want and need to move.

After all, they are already showing us.

Continue exploring: Embrace the e-bike generation

E-bikes could make many more local journeys practical and our younger residents happier if Barnes gives them the space to flourish.

More stories about encouraging e-bikes

Next, how do we change things without knowing whether they'll work?

Barnes will change. The question is not whether change happens, but what criteria we use when choosing among competing changes. The first of these was: Design Barnes for people first, not cars.

As the Barnes2050 Manifesto develops you’ll see how these principles inform the proposals for helping Barnes - place and people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050.

This second principle starts with an apparent contradiction.

Barnes2050 has argued repeatedly for fewer cars and for giving less of our limited public space to their movement and storage.

But Barnes still needs vehicles.

Buses. Ambulances and fire engines. Builders and tradespeople. Delivery vans. Dustin wagons. Carers. Taxis. And, yes, private cars for journeys and people for whom the alternatives don’t work.

So perhaps the useful distinction isn’t between vehicles and everyone else.

It is between the traffic Barnes needs and the traffic we could reasonably do without.

Road space on the peninsula is limited. If we want buses, deliveries and other essential vehicles to move more easily, one answer has be to make more room for them by reducing less necessary traffic.

That is the thinking behind this second principle.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Principle 2: Get buses and vans moving

Barnes2050 does not want to ban cars or create a vehicle-free corner of London. The hope is to balance between vehicles and the society they serve.

The debate is about the volume and mix of traffic on the peninsula’s roads and streets.

Road space is scarce. Reducing low-value private-car traffic can improve conditions for socially useful motor traffic.

Part of the issue is the nature of our landscape. So much of SW13 is green or blue, grass or water. It is part of what makes Barnes distinctive. As good stewards, we should strengthen and improve that, never reduce it.

Much of the remaining land is already developed: housing, schools, commerce and roads. It is the pressure on the latter that informs this principle.

In the last decade, Barnes has begun converting road and parking space into bikehangars, rain gardens and parklets. Barnes2050wants this process to continue, but believes we need principles to guide it.

Roads are a limited public resource and every vehicle is not equally valuable. When space is scarce, Barnes should favour journeys that benefit many people over those that benefit only one. Buses, emergency vehicles and commercial deliveries keep the village functioning. Making their journeys quicker and more reliable should take precedence over adding capacity for private cars.

Barnes2050 believes there needs to be fewer cars, whether fuelled by petrol, diesel of electric. That would allow easier movement for more important vehicles, which in priority order are:

• Blue light services

• Buses

• Commercial vehicles

It is worth saying, again, Barnes2050 has found no evidence the emergency services are struggling to fulfil their role in Barnes because Hammersmith Bridge is not open to motor traffic.

But we know buses are slowing down.

According to The Londoner‘s analysis of Transport for London data for 2015 and 2025, Richmond council suffered steepest dropin bus speeds of London’s 32 boroughs.

Buses are an important part of the active travel mix. The passenger numbers are falling and slower and less reliable buses may make reversing that decline harder. So what can we do to improve their speed and attractiveness?

Meanwhile, it is hard to imagine there will be fewer commercial vehicles in future. Whilst writing this article, parcels were delivered for the neighbours. As for the builders….

By 2050, the hope is a number of measures - a car-free Bridge, 20mph speed limit, School Streets plus pedestrian pop-ups,SUV parking charges, bike hangars and trees replacing car parking spaces, more space to park e-bikes and a better pedestrian experience - will introduce sufficient friction to discourage car-ownership and encourage more to walk, wheel, bus and bike.

Continue exploring: Get buses and vans moving

Reliable buses and efficient deliveries depend on freeing essential vehicles from unnecessary traffic and obstacles.

More stories about prioritising buses and vans

Next in the series, embracing the e-bike generation

Some will be better than others. Some ideas will solve one problem while creating another. So if Barnes2050 is going to argue seriously for change, it needs a way of deciding which ideas are worth pursuing.

That is where principles come in.

The Manifesto is the heart of this journal: the place where the ambition is made visible, tested, refined and, when necessary, reworked.

It is made up of several chapters.

Inputs

• Signals - early glimpses of possible futures

• Trends - evidence of the future taking shape

• Visions - plausible futures based on values and experiences

Outputs

• Principles – small number of guiding ideas that should how we decide

• Proposals – specific interventions, big and small to change Barnes

This post introduces the next of these: principles.

They are the criteria we should use when choosing among competing changes between now and 2050.

These are not predictions about Barnes in 2050.

Good proposals will usually satisfy several of them. Most will involve trade-offs. These principles are intended to help make those trade-offs explicit.

There are always downsides. Our active travel Bridge is increasingly popular but it denies some Barnes’ residents the ability to move easily.

Because these are meant to practical, they will be limited in number.

Like the rest of Barnes2050, they are subject to change. Launch, learn iterate is the engine for this process. If you have any comments about this approach or the specifics below, please do get in touch.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Barnes2050 Principles

This week sees the launch of the first Barnes2050 principles.

Today - design Barnes for people first, not cars.

Over the next few days, I’ll introduce four more:

• Get buses and vans moving

• Embrace the e-bike generation

• Test new thinking with purpose, regularly

• Use major renewal to build for the climate we are going to have

Together they will become the framework Barnes2050 uses to judge future proposals.

They are not the only principles that matter. They are simply the ones that have emerged most clearly from the work so far.

These will be brief descriptions. Deeper, fuller consideration will follow.

Design Barnes for people first, not cars

This lies at the heart of Barnes2050 thinking.

What kind of place are we trying to create?

For much of the last century, Barnes—like most places in Britain—has been shaped around the movement and storage of private cars.

Barnes2050 starts from a different assumption: public space should first serve the people who live, meet, walk, shop, play and spend time here.

That does not mean every road should become pedestrianised, or that vehicles no longer matter. Often they will continue to dominate. But they should not dominate by default.

Walk - literally - for twenty minutes in any direction on the peninsula and the opportunities become obvious.

At every junction, crossing and stretch of pavement, ask the same question: could we make life easier, better for people walking, meeting, shopping, waiting, cycling, catching a bus, pushing a buggy, using a wheelchair or simply spending time outdoors?

The rewards are wider than transport: healthier lives, stronger local businesses, extend far beyond public transport, lower emissions and a more sociable Barnes.

Continue exploring: Designing Barnes for people first, not cars

Barnes should be shaped around people living, working, playing and belonging, not chiefly around the movement and storage of cars.

More stories about designing Barnes for people first, not cars

Notes & thoughts

Trends and visions help Barnes2050 understand possible futures; principles help it choose between them; proposals are what follows from those choices.

This the first of five principles published this week. Each will be explored in more detail over the coming days. Next, Get buses and vans moving.

Together these principles will become the framework Barnes2050 uses to judge future proposals. If a proposal doesn’t support one or more of these principles, the chances are it isn’t a proposal worth pursuing.

Over to you.

If these are the rules by which Barnes2050 intends to judge change, are they the right rules?

Let me know what you think.

Until then, next in the series, how do we get our buses and vans moving, again?

I am, probably, addicted to both.

Most days there are news stories relevant to Barnes2050. Occasionally something else jumps off the page. Yesterday it was a quote.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

I started the inevitable online search. Did Jules Verne say this? When? What was the context?

That was when I stumbled on Elif Shafak’s National Humanities Lecture from February 2026. She said of this quote,

I like this phrase.

I like how it combines two separate components.

On the one hand, it opens up space for imagination, creativity.

On the other hand, for awareness, knowledge, research, observation, critical thinking.

So as to be able to live our lives to the fullest, we need both.

Only the humanities and the arts are capable of blending these two.

Only with their help can we continue to dream with our eyes open.

(Word) Perfect.

I realised that is how I see Barnes SW13 now.

I walk and bike the streets of Barnes everyday. Since I started this project I am more aware, more sensitive of what is around me. Every change of sign. The builders starting afresh at another home or shop.

Then something happens.

The synapses crackle. My lived experiences and values kick-in. What I see collides with what I carry.

I am still a liberal arts student. A lifetime drenched in history. The journalist’s instinct to ask another question. The R&D habit of wondering what happens next and whether we might try something different. Curiosity. Lots of it.

The Manifesto chapters are my (admittedly clumsy) attempt to codify some of what I carry. To make the values behind the instinct visible.

But instinct isn’t enough

Then comes the test. Is the thing real? Is there evidence? Has somewhere else solved it differently? What am I missing?

Sometimes the original thought survives. Sometimes it changes completely. Sometimes it deserves to die.

Shafak and before her, Verne provide a more arresting description.

I have been dreaming with my eyes open.

Barnes2050 collects these.

They are not predictions. They are nudges. Signals.

What might this mean for Barnes SW13? What can we learn from them? Which should we resist?

Horizon scanning, the name given to this process, is standard practice in many businesses and organisations. There are many different approaches. The Canadian government, for example, offers a useful rule of thumb: three related weak signals from different sources are a reasonable indication that change may be occurring.

Bear that in mind with this selection of stories from a scorching August at the end of the UK’s hottest summer on record,

• Hammersmith Bridge: council submits £128m repair bid

• Richmond borough’s most unsettling loudspeaker

• Encouraging signs of local political leadership, maybe

• No more contrails in our sky?

• e-bikes are the quickest way to travel and now come insured, some for free

• Taxing income and wealth is .. complicated

• Barnes’ four shopping parades in good health

• Generate your own electricity, even under grey skies - plug-in solar now available

But let’s start with the climate.

Climate: Heatwave 5

The clue is that number.

The rain may have arrived before the month closed, but by then the landscape was hurting. Another ‘false autumn’.

Barnes2050 has argued since launch that heat and water are equally threatening to Barnes.

But only now is the scale becoming clear.

The Guardian reported ONS estimates that more than 40,000 deaths were associated with England’s hottest days between 1988 and 2025. The figures do not include 2026. London had the highest proportion of heat-associated deaths of any English region.

Gulp.

Barnes is an ageing village in an ageing borough. That does not make everyone here especially vulnerable to heat, but it surely makes the consequences worth understanding.

James Tucker at the ONS reported,

Our results show that the gap between heat- and cold-related deaths has narrowed in recent years as the proportion of heat-related deaths has increased.

Insight from the Met Office suggests these temperatures should no longer surprise us. We have a reasonable idea of the direction of the local climate by 2050.

The question is whether Barnes is changing quickly enough to live comfortably, and safely, in it.

By month end, attention had turned to the tragedy in Nepal.

Jonathan Watts has explained explained the between the human-induced climate crisis and the glacier collapse that caused the massacre,

Two days before the collapse, the ground temperature hit its highest point in the last two years, according to Dr Hamish Pritchard, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey, whose team had sensors 6 miles (10km) away from the site.

‘These high temperatures would have weakened the snowpack, filled crevasses with water and thawed the bonds between ice and rock that hold these glaciers in place,’ he told the Science Media Centre.

Nepal contributes less than 0.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, while its neighbours India and China are among the world’s biggest emitters. The Himalayas, which span India, China, Nepal and Bhutan, have been warming at a rate nearly 50% faster than the global average.

Bill McKibben did the maths,

.. On average, Nepalis produce about four-tenths of a ton of carbon emissions annually, compared with about 14 tons for an American. More than 99 percent of the country’s electricity comes from hydropower (though much of that capacity was wiped out in last week’s floods).

He ends,

They are not causing the crisis that is killing them: we are.

Meteorologists have warned us 2027 could be wetter and could be hotter because of El Niño. As Jason Rowlatt reported on BBC News, this could be a the strongest in decades.

Another reminder that climate adaptation is not something to begin in 2049.

Infrastructure: H&F bid for Structures fund

UK government deadlines and heatwaves came together neatly this month.

It was hot weather that eventually did for Hammersmith Bridge. Yet loud demands continue for its restoration to carry private vehicles, despite transport being the second-largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions in Richmond borough.

August was a critical month for the UK Government’s £1 billion Structures Fund for major local infrastructure, including bridges, flyovers and tunnels.

Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) council along with many others, submitted a bid to fund phased repairs to Hammersmith Bridge. It had earlier put the estimated cost at £128 million, aimed at keeping the bridge operational for pedestrians and cyclists and keeping the river beneath it open.

The Government now has to weigh this bid alongside many others from across England. In many ways they face the same choice as they did when asked to fund a full restoration - 40% HB options open to UKG

If H&F does not secure the money it needs, the future of the Bridge becomes uncertain again. H&F council leader Stephen Cowan has repeatedly stressed the extent of repairs still required.

Maybe no cash, no Bridge.

But certainly no repair programme and no confidence about the Bridge’s long-term future. And no point designing clever new ways of getting people across it if the underlying structure cannot be secured.

So maybe no pod.

The UK Government says Structures Fund decisions are expected in autumn 2026.

Meanwhile the Finns, not trolling us but it feels like, have just built a gorgeous, epic bridge.

Supporters of London’s premier active-travel bridge* are always keen to see others spring up around the world.

Helsinki’s new Kruunuvuori Bridge is the longest bridge in Finland and cars will not use it. It has been designed for trams, cycling and walking as part of the wider Crown Bridges project.

The point here is not that *Hammersmith Bridge should imitate Helsinki’s.

Rather cities elsewhere are still building major infrastructure around public transport, walking and cycling. That is a useful reference point when we decide what sort of bridge Barnes needs for the next 25 years.

Infrastructure: Richmond’s digital environment

This is a curious story.

Or rather, it prompted a curious response about which I am still not sure.

Richmond council has installed a new safety speaker at Teddington Lock to deter dangerous jumping into the Thames.

Despite public notices, extra physical barriers and warnings, people continue to jump from the bridge into the river.

The new speaker plays a short message when CCTV operators see anyone approaching the edge.

Why does that feel different?

We are already surrounded by technology that watches, senses or responds to us.

Traffic lights change. Zebra crossings bleep. Cameras monitor roads and buildings. Images from private doorbells and security cameras circulate around neighbourhood WhatsApp groups after an incident.

The Metropolitan Police now uses live facial recognition elsewhere in London.

Autonomous vehicles, already on London’s streets in small numbers, are are covered in sensors.

The environment is becoming live and alive, if not sentient.

Now add the human in the loop: someone at a remote location observes behaviour through a machine and speaks directly into the physical space.

That feels like a signal from the future.

For Barnes, the question is how comfortable we will be as public space becomes increasingly monitored and responsive, and what rules govern it.

Governance: Lessons from Ulez and car-free days

Where are the ‘blade runners’ now?

Sadiq Khan, writing in the The Guardian, said

There is now a mountain of evidence to show that the Ulez has slashed air pollution and improved air quality across London, and research published by Imperial College London earlier this year showed that this is already saving lives.

A new, independent study published by Queen Mary University of London today goes further still, showing how – by helping to clean up the capital’s air – the Ulez is improving the lungs and lives of London’s children

But this is not really a story about Ulez.

It is about politicians.

Christian Wolmar, also writing in the Guardian, argued,

We need politicians to explain why the unrestricted use of cars in urban centres is damaging to the local economy as well as to the environment, to people’s health and to the overall feel of a place.

And

Brave politicians need to take on opponents without compromise.

That is what Khan did with Ulez.

He came under huge pressure to backtrack, including after the Uxbridge by-election. He stuck to the policy. London subsequently recorded substantial reductions in nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants.

Other politicians occasionally show the same willingness.

Richmond council leader, Gareth Roberts is rightly proud of his early move to implement 20 mph speed limit across the borough.

We need more of this. And maybe there are signs.

Richmond council is becoming more willing to manage road space flexibly.

It continues to experiment with School Streets, including the trial around Barnes Primary. Roads already close for exceptional events. And this September the council invited residents to ‘turn our road into a Play Street for a day’.

None of this amounts to wholesale pedestrianisation.

That is the point.

Barnes2050 has made the case for a pedestrian pop-up along The Terrace on Boat Race day. Something similar could happen around Barnes Pond during Barnes Fair.

Roads do not have to perform exactly the same function every hour of every day.

Perhaps the emerging signal is simply this: we are becoming more comfortable with temporarily reallocating public space for public purposes.

By 2050 that may seem considerably less radical than it does today.

Transport: Mitigation - reducing contrails

Responses to climate change are usually divided into two broad categories.

Mitigation reduces the causes of climate change. Adaptation is how we adjust to its effects.

In the month when debate continued about Heathrow expansion came news of an attempt to tackle a less visible part of aviation’s climate impact.

Contrails.

Operation Blue Skies is a £5 million programme involving NATS, Google, the Met Office, Cambridge and Imperial universities and other organisations.

The idea is surprisingly simple.

Aircraft sometimes create persistent contrails which trap heat in the atmosphere. Researchers believe that relatively small changes in altitude could allow aircraft to avoid some of the atmospheric conditions in which the most warming contrails form.

Trials are due to take place across North Atlantic airspace during this winter and next.

This matters because contrails are thought to account for roughly a third of aviation’s total climate impact, as Simon Clarke explains.

There is an intriguing bigger point.

Some of the response to climate change may not involve giving something up or replacing an entire technology. It may come from changing how existing systems operate, using better data to remove some of their worst consequences.

In this case for Barnes, sitting beneath the flight paths of one of the world’s great airports, that is worth watching.

Transport: e-bikes fastest way round London and some of them are now insured

Barnes2050 believes in the e-bike generation.

For the renters there are so many benefits but one of them is speed.

New research, according to CyclingElectric.com, shows

cycling is the fastest inner city rush hour transport, with new findings from London showing that two wheels beats the tube and cars for most trips.

Terra who did the research

.. analysed 2,168 weekday bike trips where a wearable device was worn, and a key finding emerged; the bike beat 92% of matched trips aligned to TfL services, as well as 75% of rush hour driving trips.

That does not prove that a bicycle is always the fastest way around London, but it suggests cycling is extremely competitive for many everyday urban journeys.

Meanwhile Forest has introduced third-party insurance for riders. According to The Times (££ Paywall)

Forest, which operates in 20 of London’s boroughs, will have third-party insurance to protect people injured and property damaged by cyclists on their e-bikes starting in September.

Critically this will be adopted at no added cost to riders. Lime, Bolt and Santander offer similar cover but charge riders.

This may sound like administrative detail.

It is actually part of normalisation.

E-bikes are becoming an increasingly established part of the transport system around them: quicker, regulated, insured and, eventually, perhaps better integrated.

Small steps towards making an important, flourishing form of transport feel ordinary.

Welcome to this regular digest of stories and signals about future Barnes.

Economy - Income tax and Mansion Tax

Richmond borough is the sixth largest contributor of income tax in London, according to LondonCentric, contributing more income tax than any of the UK’s 15 largest cities outside London and more than Glasgow and Manchester combined.

That tells you something about the peninsula.

It’s against that background that discussion in August continued around another potential tax, commonly called the Mansion Tax. Its proper name is the High Value Council Tax Surcharge.

Unsurprisingly, in a borough, and especially a place such as Barnes, with an extraordinary concentration of expensive property, the impact would be substantial.

More than half the expected national revenue from the surcharge is estimated to come from properties in Richmond, Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Wandsworth.

Around 5,730 Richmond properties are expected to be affected.

The leaders of the four councils have written to the Government urging it to rethink the scheme.

This complex and complicated.

The UK Government’s argument is understandable. Council tax remains based on 1991 property valuations, so a very expensive house can therefore attract a remarkably small annual property tax relative to its current value.

But Barnes exposes the complications too.

In the immediate future, Barnes risks becoming London’s ‘largest gated community’.

Not because of the Bridge. This statement would stand even if cars were restored to Hammersmith Bridge.

The extreme concentration of wealth in property creates the gate.

Take that far enough and you arrive at a strange Barnes in 2050: an ageing village in an ageing borough where only people who already possess considerable housing or pension wealth can afford to remain.

In today’s terms that would mean ‘Boomers with defined-benefit pensions and City bonuses’.

Is that what we want?

We may be approaching the political limits of relying so heavily on earned income as the tax base. Wealth and particularly property wealth, is an obvious place governments will continue to look.

That will force some people to think differently about where and how they live.

Conversation at the Barnes Community Association Barnes Tuesday Local has turned more than once to downsizing during retirement or converting homes for multigenerational living.

By 2050 both may become more common.

And perhaps Barnes would be better for it. A place where a larger house does not automatically mean one or two older people occupying it until the end of their lives.

That transition may be uncomfortable for individuals.

But the alternative could be a village steadily pricing out its own future.

Economy - more small and independent traders opening

The four retail parades in Barnes play an outsized role in creating and maintaining this community.

My working assumption, which Barnes2050 intends to test properly, is that part of this comes from the unusually high proportion of small and independent traders and relatively few long-term empty units.

They provide Barnes some of its distinctive character, alongside the green and blue landscape.

The important thing is to maintain all three by 2050.

For the moment, the next generation of retailers is taking its place.

Greenfield Artisan Butchers are at 189 Castelnau.

This is the second new opening recently on Castelnau. Fat Goose Bakery already seems popular. The shop was busy on the two mornings I cycled past.

Head towards the Pond and you’ll notice the former Cote site will soon be the home of the Little Navigators nursery for children aged between 9 months and 5 years. Founder Celine Stonex-Kennedy lives locally and plans to open in early 2027. You can register your here.

Head towards the river and where the High Street ends, you find work is underway at Alison, a coffee shop and patisserie opposite The Watermans.

And Church Road has openings coming too. One Church Road - guess the address - will be a high-end menswear shop. Dee Cafe at 153 Church Road will offer ‘Fine coffee, fresh food, inspired by art and nature’.

Individual shops will always come and go.

The signal worth watching is whether Barnes can continue replacing them with distinctive, viable local businesses rather than allowing vacancies to accumulate or every parade to become interchangeable with every other affluent London neighbourhood.

There’ll be much more on this topic in the coming months.

Housing: Plug-in solar now available from Argos

Look the roofs in Barnes and you will find solar panels.

Not many, but on most streets there seems to have one house with a shiny roof, panel-clad.

Until now installing solar has generally meant making quite a substantial intervention in your house.

That may be changing, as the BBC reported,

They are significantly cheaper than roof panels, can be installed without an electrician and are suitable for properties with outdoor space, including some balconies.

The UK Government hopes they will help households save money and reduce reliance on imported fuel.

Approved systems can supply up to 800W. The UK Government estimates they could provide up to a fifth of an average household’s electricity and save up to £110 a year.

The Evening Standard reported that Argos became the first major retailer to sell them, with other large retailers expected to follow.

Prices are still substantial: current Argos kits start at around £600. That should fall in the years ahead.

The important point is what happens when generating some of your own electricity changes from being a building project to something approaching a consumer purchase.

Barnes has thousands of homes, gardens, terraces, balconies and outbuildings where conventional rooftop solar may be expensive, complicated or inappropriate.

By 2050, will generating at least some electricity at home feel as unremarkable as installing broadband?

That suddenly looks a little more plausible.

Which of these stories will matter in five years?

Most weak signals disappear. A few turn out to have been early glimpses of something much bigger.

The useful thing is to notice them.

You can read back-issues of this take on the recent news relevant to future Barnes here.

Putney Society’s response to the consultation about Heathrow’s expansion has many qualities.

Short.

Insightful.

Evidence-rich.

And relevant to Barnes.

Putney Society are calling for,

• guaranteed respite from aircraft noise for at least nine hours a day

• a condition that the total noise impact of a three-runway Heathrow should be no greater than the currently forecast impact of the airport without a third runway

• a seven-hour night flight ban as soon as daytime capacity allows; to be extended to eight hours no later than when a third runway opens

• a commitment in principle to steeper descent approaches.

This is their full response. Or you can download the file below.

260831 Henps Response Putney Societydf

288KB ∙ PDF file

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Download

The deadline for consultation is 23:59 on Tuesday 01 September 2026.

This is the UK Government survey.

Gatwick Airport’s expansion has been approved. Attention now returns to Heathrow’s plans.

The deadline is approaching to have your say on the proposed third runway.

The UK government will consider the responses it receives before deciding whether the Heathrow Expansion National Policy Statement (HENPS) will be amended and then finalised. Parliament will also need to vote on the policy before it goes ahead.

The proposed third runway is only half the story, though.

There is a second review which could have just as large an impact on Barnes SW13. The third runway might ultimately be rejected, yet the redesign of London’s airspace could still leave the skies above Barnes busier than they are today.

In many ways, Barnes sits at the heart of what should be a national discussion. The runway debate asks whether Britain wants a bigger Heathrow. The airspace debate asks which communities will live beneath the aircraft.

Maybe that opening sentence should have read: one down, two to go.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Living beneath the western approach

Heathrow Airport is a wonder of planning and management.

A day in the life of airspace around Heathrow Airport provides a vivid sense of the the scale of the challenge.

This short video, also from Heathrow Airport, explains how arrivals works. Ignore the monarchical slip and closing bromide.

Barnes is overflown mainly on western arrival days, with planes landing on Heathrow’s northern runway.

The weather determines the direction used on a given day. Aircraft normally land and take-off into wind. The prevailing westerlies over the UK mean Heathrow typically uses the western approach for 70% of the time. Easterly operations account for the remaining 30%.

Heathrow has two runways, northern and southern. During daytime westerly operations,

one is used for arrivals and the other for departures. They switch at 3pm, giving places such as Barnes a break of about nine hours from the main stream of arriving aircraft directly overhead.

The morning and afternoon pattern is reversed the following week.

Heathrow’s expansion plans

Rather than retell arguments that have been debated for years, this article focuses on what the proposals could mean for Barnes. Links below explain the case for and against expansion in more detail.

Let’s start with that third runway.

The airport’s owners, Heathrow Airport Limited (HAL), want to build a full-length, 3,500-metre runway, which would require the M25 motorway being moved.

HAL’s scheme is estimated to cost £33billion, including £1.5billion to move the M25, and is expected to be fully privately financed.

Annual passenger numbers at Heathrow are projected to rise by 79 per cent to 150 million, carried on as many as 756,000 flights a year. This means an 700 additional planes a day.

This explanation from Heathrow Airport is seven years old and was produced for an earlier consultation, but it remains a useful explanation of how expansion would work. Its age also says something about how long we have been discussing this.

Alternatively, BBC News explains the plans.

What it might mean for Barnes

If the expansion goes ahead Barnes will have more overhead flights - and noise - because of the increase in numbers.

The government says overall aircraft noise can be held to 2024 levels despite that significant increase in flights, although this analysis is based on indicative routes ahead of the formal airspace review.

Barnes will also have less respite.

The three-runway system would require a new alternation and respite regime.

The draft 2026 policy does not preserve today’s roughly half-day pattern. Instead it anticipates reduced or altered respite while requiring an applicant to set out a credible replacement scheme.

As Putney.News reports,

The Putney Society, which has read the document closely, puts the loss (of respite) at roughly half.

Your opinion still matters

Some commentators, including the Barnes Bugle, have suggested the Gatwick decision is a blow for those against the third runway at Heathrow.

Putney.News disagrees. It argues that our views still count, particularly if they are framed around evidence and specific parts of the draft policy.

If your instinct is that all this is settled and there is no point saying anything, the government has quietly told you otherwise.

In its own consultation papers it says it will give greater weight to responses built on argument and evidence than to simple statements of support or opposition, and greater weight again to responses that point at particular sections of the draft. It also says artificial intelligence may be used to analyse what comes in.

That leads Putney.News to a useful conclusion,

A thousand identical objections is one objection. A hundred different ones, each naming a different problem, is a hundred.

The rest is your own experience, and it is the part nobody else can write. What time the planes wake you. What you cannot do in the garden when the landings switch. Which park has been spoiled. That is evidence, and it is the kind the department has not got.

There is advice aplenty whether you are in favour or against this expansion. Fleur Anderson MP (Putney, Labour) who is opposed has created this guide.

You can use that to complete the UK Government survey.

Putney.News offers help of a different kind.

If you are still daunted by the official consultation process, it has produced a useful tool to help you build your response.

It can take as little as five minutes, although spending a little longer will make your response more useful. The potential issues with expansion are listed. You choose those that concern you most and explain why, in as few or as many words as you think necessary.

Airspace review

The third runway has attracted most of the headlines. Yet there is another process, largely unnoticed outside the aviation world, that could prove just as important for Barnes.

The UK Airspace Design Service (UKADS) is redesigning the UK’s flight paths as part of a wider programme to modernise air traffic management, including the airspace that would be needed to accommodate any Heathrow expansion. Its aim is to make the skies safer, more efficient and better able to cope with future demand.

The challenge for Barnes is that no one yet knows precisely where those redesigned routes will lie.

Airspace modernisation could make Barnes quieter, noisier or simply differently overflown. The detailed local consequences may not be known until after national decisions on Heathrow expansion have been taken. What we do know is that decisions made over the next few years could shape the character of our skies for decades.

The modernisation programme aims to increase capacity, resilience and efficiency through better coordinated routes, satellite-based navigation, continuous climb and descent, and less airborne holding.

All those variables means the impact on Barnes is not certain. Flight paths could become more concentrated over narrower corridors, or redistributed across different communities. Aircraft may be able to remain higher for longer on some routes. Periods of respite could be retained, shortened or reorganised.

Heathrow says its statutory public consultation on detailed flight-path options is not expected to begin until at least 2027, with implementation likely only in the late 2020s or early 2030s.

That means Barnes could be quieter, noisier or simply experience a different pattern of overflight in the 2030s. Today, neither the UK Government, Heathrow nor Richmond council can yet say with confidence which outcome will apply.

Any reduction in aircraft over Barnes would generally mean increased overflight elsewhere, although more efficient routing, higher flight profiles and shorter, more direct routes may reduce the total number of people significantly affected by aircraft noise.

This is why the runway debate asks whether Britain wants a bigger Heathrow. The airspace debate, when it starts, asks which communities will live beneath the aircraft.

We already live beneath one of Heathrow’s principal arrival routes and benefit from today’s runway alternation, which brings predictable periods of respite. Both could change. The expansion debate matters, but the redesign of the skies above Barnes may matter just as much, perhaps more.

If you want to understand the wider case against expansion, several local and London voices have already set it out well.

Sarah Olney MP’s letter to the Secretary of State for Transport, Heidi Alexander outlines the case against expansion and is reproduced in full above. Its discussion of the economic case—the central justification for the Government’s support—is particularly useful.

The Mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan is opposed to the expansion in part because the UK government’s case for the increased capacity at Heathrow ‘relies heavily’ on findings that are almost a decade old and in part because of the ‘.. severe impact it will have on noise, air pollution and meeting our climate change targets’.

In the Mayor’s submission to the House of Commons Transport Committee, the Mayor and Transport for London argue the plan would allow more flights, and therefore more emissions, while ‘taking advantage of environmental improvements unrelated to airport expansion’.

The Mayor believes that expansion would consume some of the environmental headroom created by policies such as the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), which has delivered large reductions in air pollution. ‘This progress must not be undone by expansion,’ the submission says.

Richmond council are opposed to the expansion.

Elsewhere Research by Possible suggests public sentiment is skeptical about how any benefits might be shared.

Now it's your turn

Whatever your view, please contribute to the consultation. Responses need to be submitted before midnight on 1 September 2026.

This is the UK Government survey.

By 2050, the third runway may be old news. The more enduring question for Barnes may be what happened to the skies above us: how many aircraft pass overhead, how often, and how much quiet remains between them?

It’s hard to relate the reality of today to the potential futures of tomorrow.

Of course there are experts on hand to help.

The Met Office has provided a description of the climate w can expect in Richmond borough in 2050. It is full of tables and charts. But projections struggle to make the future emotionally comprehensible.

Kew Gardens spends 36 pages setting out how its landscape and planting will need to adapt to the climate ahead. The report, which you can download below, is typically insightful and easy to read.

260817 Planting For The Future Kew Gardens

17MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

But that quote? That brings the probabilities into sharp focus.

We can take in our today - as I write there’s a gentle breeze blowing through the opened window for the first time in weeks - and conjure the future through another city. It’s especially easy when that city figures so large in our imagination. Those magical Olympic Games in 1992. That football club. And the many visits down the years.

If thats’s our future, what does it feel like?

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050?

Barcelona, 2026

Of course Kew Gardens isn’t saying that Barnes SW13 in 2050 will have Barcelona’s weather today. Climate is not weather. The comparison is about the underlying climate: patterns of heat, rainfall and extremes over time.

But a week’s weather can still help make that rather abstract comparison feel real.

So here’s the forecast for Barcelona for the next seven days. These temperatures are higher than seasonal averages. August is usually nearer to 29°C high and 21°C low.

Here is a comparable forecast for Barnes. For comparison Barnes season averages are 23°C high and 14°C low.

Of course seeing one week’s forecast can mislead. The same forecast for Barnes last week would have signalled another heatwave. Kew Gardens reached 38.1°C on Thursday 13 August, the fifth-highest temperature ever recorded in the UK.

That is why Barnes2050 is going to return to these forecasts on a regular basis in the coming months.

I want to use Barcelona as a recurring lens through which to make Barnes’s possible future less abstract. Sometimes through weather. Increasingly through how Barcelona actually lives with heat.

There will be more about the Barcelona climate today. But I want to go further. I want to look at how Barcelona has tried to adapt to it. Barnes isn’t learning from a city that has solved heat; it’s learning from a city further down the adaptation road.

How do they provide shade? How are their homes different? What about their public spaces and street design? In short, how do they live, work, play and belong?

Let’s end this report with the most obvious insight. But one worth repeating.

By 15 July, 2026 had already produced more UK days above 30°C than the whole of 1976. Warm nights were tracking at record levels. By mid-August more than 1,000 wildfires had been recorded in England and Wales. And the UK Government sent us an emergency alert.

It had taken a record-breaking British summer has given Barnes a taste of the temperatures we associate with Barcelona today.

One exceptional summer doesn’t tell us what Barnes will feel like in 2050. But climate change is shifting the odds. The sort of heat that once felt exceptional is becoming less exceptional. By mid-century, summers that now make headlines will be considerably more familiar.

So imagine if 2026 is the new normal.

What needs to change?

Explore more stories about our changing climate and what it could mean for Barnes and the rest of London by 2050.

We know that heat is more than uncomfortable for some. Looking to 2050, it is both heat and water are climate threats, especially for Barnes SW13, an aging riverside urban village.

Do you know how much of a threat? How many people have died this year because of the heatwave?

The number is rarely reported. Do you know?*

Meanwhile, another story is brewing. Its exact location is not clear but we know its rough outline.

A young man, it is almost always a young man, takes a weapon to school or college, shoots his fellow students or staff. Sometimes he then turns on himself.

In 2025 there were more than five hundred incidents where four or more people were shot, whether killed or wounded.

Every time it hurts. Maybe it is hearing a younger American family member talk about her school drills for such an attack at infant school. Maybe it is the still-shocking prevalence of guns.

Then I saw this chart.

Really?

More Europeans die of summer heat than Americans die of guns?

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050?

Hannah Ritchie, a scientist and researcher at the University of Oxford, spent some time challenging the comparison. She made some useful adjustments to the formula and the numbers, including:

• using comparable estimates of excess heat death on both sides

• using a broader definition of Europe to include 26 EU countries (excluding Malta), plus the UK, Switzerland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Norway, and Serbia

• breaking down US gun deaths by homicide, suicide, and other causes such as unintentional injury and deaths by law enforcement

• and, critically, show the data as rates per 100,000 people in the total population

Here’s the result:

*Nearly 2,900 deaths have already been associated with extreme heat in the UK this year. That is before the effects of the latest heatwaves are fully counted. The definitive UKHSA Heat mortality monitoring report, England: 2026 isn’t scheduled for publication until 1 April 2027.

You can read more on the effects of heat on Barnes, now and in future, here.