The 2024-2025 Kensington Society winter newsletter is in the post

This year we have two main articles. One is an update of our 2016 article about short-lets (i.e. Airbnb and similar), which after an enormous growth in London and RBKC from the summer of 2015, when London’s short-let ban was lifted, to the spring of 2020, when Covid 19 almost killed that whole industry. From a peak in the autumn of 2019 of some 7,000 whole homes being short-let in RBKC alone, half had disappeared by June 2022. But since then the short-lets have begun to climb again, and by September 2024 the number of whole homes available to short-let in Greater London was higher than ever before.

But now it looks as if this unregulated and very profitable industry, which has caused havoc in many neighbourhoods and has made thousands of homes unavailable for local residents, will finally become regulated.

The other article s the story about the big motorway that would have run along the borough’s western border if it hadn’t been for the thousands of activists who in the early 1970s managed to stop two enormous motorway rings that otherwise would have encircled Inner London

There is also an article about the iconic red British phone boxes, which celebrated 100 years in 2024. While they were essential until they turned 80, the mobile phone has made them more or less redundant during the last 20 years – but some of them are being reborn as libraries, defibrillator stations and other things.

As usual there is also a four-page report about planning policies, housing targets, building developments, street advertisements and other matters. Usually, we have two separate reports, but this year we have merged the chairman’s report and the special planning report, as so many things overlap. following the general election this summer, which saw 14 years of Conservative rule be replaced by a Labour government.

You can find the 2024 newsletter in our archive or via this link.