"I saw this couple that bought a boat and lived in London and renovated it. They had the most amazing life because they were living a city life but with half the bills, basically."
The annual National Pub & Bar Awards nominees have just been announced, and eight London pubs have made the list of 252 pubs and bars across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland vying for pub supremacy.
The building, an office block with shops on the ground floor, is at the eastern end of Oxford Street, just north of Soho Square, and sits above the possible route of the Crossrail 2 railway, if/when it is eventually built.
Shoreditch could see 30 aircraft hangars worth of commercial floorspace and hundreds of new homes under the major proposals to shake up local planning policies in the borough over the next 15 years, which the Labour-run council claims will bring over 11,000 new jobs to the creative and commercial district.
The plans would affect an area known as Royal Victoria Dock West, which is the end closest to London City Hall and the Cable Car. If carried out, the two biggest changes will be a range of floating walkways reaching into the dock, lined with water plants. The other change will be the introduction of walkways on the south side of the dock for long-term residential boat moorings.
Last month, plans were submitted for Whitechapel Healthcare and Research Campus, a £750m development that would provide homes for key workers and supposedly address needs for more green spaces and community facilities. The proposal for the campus comes from investment firm BGO in collaboration with PLP Architecture and Barts Health NHS Trust. It's part of the newly announced Barts Life Science Cluster.
Our transport is always being upgraded to make travel smoother, our neighbourhoods are always getting new homes and community spaces, and fresh cultural offerings like restaurants and theatre shows are always popping up. So naturally, 2026 will be full of new openings. We've put together a list of all of the most exciting new projects set to alter London over the next 12 months.
The results revealed London as number one, with 49,330 average monthly searches per 10k people. Birmingham came second with 9,150, and Manchester third with 7,080. Leeds and Bristol rounded out the top five with 6,230 and 5,840 respectively. Meanwhile, Carlisle sat at the bottom of the table with just 370. Cambridge came second to last with 420, and then Ripon with 580.
American hotel chain MCR bought the spindly Fitzrovia superstar from BT Group for a cool £275 million. This was incredibly exciting news, as the former centre of the 'white heat of technology' (as then-Prime Minister Harold Wilson dubbed the communications centre upon its opening in 1964) had reduced public access after anarchist collective the Angry Brigade set off a bomb there in 1971.
The station needs upgrades to handle projected passenger demand as new housing is built nearby, but the current design wouldn't be able to accommodate it. The main problem is that the station is elevated high above the streets but has a long staircase to use. As a result, the two lifts are under unusually high use as people understandably avoid the stairs. That means the lifts are also often in need of repairs due to their higher-than-average use.
Creating workplace facilities that reflect relevance to the constant evolving changes of working patterns. Organisations need to think about balancing flexibility with functionality by integrating technology that can simplify things without any complications, whilst designing spaces that are diverse when it comes to different working styles. As traditional office attendance makes make for hybrid models, facilities now need to reimagine their spaces as a purposeful destination rather than a default location.
