Officers told the committee to approve a timber replacement for Wandsworth Roundabout's pretzel. Members voted it down 6 to 3 as visually intrusive.

The steel hoops at the centre of Wandsworth Roundabout are staying. On Thursday 17 September the council’s Planning Applications Committee voted six to three against its own officers’ recommendation to approve a timber lattice replacement, and then agreed reasons for refusing it.

The application had 153 neighbour objections on file and not one letter of support. It is the structure most people in the borough know as the pretzel.

The vote is on the council’s own webcast of the meeting. The chair put the officers’ recommendation to approve, and recorded three votes in favour and six against. (Wandsworth Council webcast, Planning Applications Committee, 17 September 2026)

The council publishes an automatically generated transcript alongside that recording. It is reliable enough to establish what was decided and not reliable enough to quote, so the account of the debate below is a summary rather than a set of quotations. Every councillor named identified themselves and their ward during the meeting, and we have checked each against the committee’s published membership.

Application 2026/2045 sought express advertisement consent to demolish the existing structure and replace it with a timber lattice carrying four digital LED displays, each 14.2m by 4.6m against the 14m by 4m screens there now. The applicant is Wildstone Estates Ltd, which holds a long lease from Transport for London on land jointly owned by TfL and the council.

The report that went to committee, published on 9 September, recommended approve with conditions. It ran to 22 pages and concluded that the proposal would not harm the setting of either nearby heritage asset, that the lighting sat within industry guidance, and that TfL’s road safety concerns could be handled by condition. (Committee report, item 3, 17 September 2026)

On the two heritage questions the report was specific. The Grade II listed Wandsworth Garage bus depot, list entry 1184233, sits about 115 metres away with two roads in between, so officers found no impact on its significance. The Old York Road Conservation Area, which includes Wandsworth Town station, would see the new structure clearly only from the station platform.

The consultation nobody was written to

The report sets out the consultation in plain numbers, and one line in it is worth reading twice:
Letters sent to neighbours 0
Site notice Yes
Press notice No
Responses received 157
Neighbour objections 153
Neighbour comments 4
Neighbour support 0

By the night of the meeting the total had risen again. The late items paper records five further objections and officers’ own note that the council had received “in excess of 160 representations to the proposal”. (Late items of correspondence, 17 September 2026)

Officers grouped the objections under design, cost, amenity, public safety and consultation. The recurring themes were the loss of a local landmark, a structure described as bulky and visually intrusive, light spilling into nearby homes, distraction for drivers, and the argument that money and disruption would be better spent on the subways and public realm beneath the roundabout. The Battersea Reach Residents Association told the council the existing screens already run 24 hours a day and cause sleep disturbance, and that replacing them was “inconceivable”.

Graphic showing the Wandsworth Roundabout advertising decision: 157 responses received, 153 neighbour objections, 0 letters sent to neighbours, 0 letters of support, officers recommended approval, and the committee voted 3 in favour and 6 against on 17 September 2026.
Graphic by Wandsworth News

What TfL said, and why it mattered

Transport for London objected on road safety grounds, and its wording is in the report. TfL noted that driver attention matters at this junction, that advertisements exist to attract attention, and that “the collision history demonstrates multiple serious and slight incidents, especially within the approach to the roundabout, where road users would have the most visibility of the advert”. It judged that contrary to London Plan policy T4 and the Mayor’s Vision Zero ambition.

In follow-up comments TfL also raised the point that additional visual clutter “may contribute to additional severance for those who are neurodivergent or have sensory processing differences”, citing London Plan policies D3 and D5.

Officers’ answer was that conditions could handle it: a luminance cap of 300 candela per square metre in darkness, static images only with no fading or swiping, a minimum ten second display, and a requirement that any change to the operation of the displays be agreed with TfL. The council’s Head of Transport Strategy, David Tiddley, told the committee that officers had examined the injuries and collisions on the roundabout and its approaches and had found nothing to link them to the existing structure. He added that a road safety audit is required for the scheme and that he saw no reason why it would not be published.

The debate that turned it

Councillor Matthew Tiller, who represents Roehampton, opened by saying that roundabouts rarely carry anything people are fond of or want preserved, so the committee should listen to the outcry in defence of the pretzel. He called the replacement messy and incongruous, and asked officers whether the existing structure would last longer without the screens.

Councillor Zarah Wiles, whose St Mary’s ward contains the roundabout, pressed officers on long term maintenance of the timber and on the increase in luminance. Councillor Samantha Lewis, who also represents Furzedown, asked whether the road safety audit attached to the scheme would be published, and whether there would be interim reports.

Councillor Tony Belton, who has sat on the committee since long before the structure went up, told members it had been extremely unpopular when it was first approved about thirty years ago, and that he thought he had voted against it then. His argument against the replacement was that if the screens do not distract drivers the advertisers are wasting their money, and if they do, that is worse.

Councillor Leonie Cooper said she had never particularly liked the existing structure, but that seeing the images of the proposed one had changed her mind: the pretzel is more transparent, with the adverts hanging inside open hoops, where the replacement would block the skyline. Councillor Will Sweet was one of the three who voted to approve. He said he struggled to see grounds for objection when the screens are a similar size and brightness to those already there, that TfL’s safety concerns looked mitigated, and that judgements about visual impact are largely subjective.

The reasons for refusal

After the vote the chair asked the committee to settle its reasons. Councillor James Craig set out the wording, and in substance it was this: that the structure’s scale, design and cluttered nature is visually intrusive, contrary to Local Plan policies LP1, LP2 and LP9 and policies D3 and D4 of the London Plan. The formal wording on the decision notice may differ, and the notice has not been issued.

Those policies are, in the council’s own 2023 Local Plan, LP1 the design-led approach, LP2 general development principles and LP9 advertisements; in the London Plan, D3 optimising site capacity through the design-led approach and D4 delivering good design.

Members also agreed to add an informative recording that the committee noted TfL’s road safety concerns, rather than making safety a reason for refusal in its own right.

Why the decision is not on the register yet

The formal decision notice has not been published. Wandsworth is midway through replacing its planning IT system, and the council has frozen publication on the existing one from Friday 11 September to Monday 28 September. During the freeze, comments cannot be submitted online and representations sent by email are not published for public viewing. The application page still shows the case as “Registered” and still invites comments.

The same freeze has stopped the weekly lists. The council’s page of weekly advertised applications and decisions runs no further than the week ending 5 September 2026. The Planning Explorer search, the other public route into the register, returned a server error to every attempt today.

The committee’s minutes are due at the next meeting of the Planning Applications Committee, on 22 October 2026. Until then the webcast is the public record of the vote.

What it means for you

The pretzel stays up. No replacement can be built under this application, and any new scheme would have to start again with a fresh application and a fresh consultation.

The existing screens are not affected by the refusal, and they are not going dark. Their last express consent expired on 2 April 2020 and they have run since under deemed consent in the advertisement regulations, which this decision does not touch.

The applicant can appeal to the Secretary of State. For advertisement consent the deadline is eight weeks from the date the council’s decision is received, so the clock does not start until the notice is issued. (Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (England) Regulations 2007, schedule 4)

If you want to follow what happens next, the case is 2026/2045 on the council’s planning register, and we track the borough’s bigger schemes on our Wandsworth planning page. Our earlier report set out what was proposed and how the consultation ran.

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