The RNLI's second busiest station in the UK and Ireland moved in on 22 September. The £3.5m base should cut emergency response times by 1 minute 20 seconds.
Wandsworth has a lifeboat station. On Tuesday 22 September the RNLI crew that has covered this stretch of the Thames from Chiswick since 2002 started operating from 90 Point Pleasant, SW18, on the riverside between Wandsworth Park and Osiers Road. Chiswick Lifeboat Station is now Wandsworth Riverside Lifeboat Station.
It is not a small arrival. Chiswick was the second busiest lifeboat station in the UK and Ireland, and the RNLI says its crews had already attended 212 incidents this year before the move. Since the search and rescue service on the tidal Thames began in January 2002, the station has attended more than 5,600 incidents and rescued more than 2,500 people.
The new base sits next to Wandsworth Riverside Quarter Pier, a stop on the Thames Clipper river bus. Part of the existing jetty was upgraded to berth the duty and standby lifeboats, which are now in sight of the first floor crew room.
Why the crew moved three miles downstream
The reason is arithmetic, and the station manager set it out when the RNLI launched its appeal for the building. Wayne Bellamy said that around 70 per cent of the station’s shouts are eastwards, towards the city, and that the RNLI estimated the move would cut the average emergency response time by 1 minute and 20 seconds.
The crew keeps the same patch. The RNLI says the lifeboats will continue to cover the river between Battersea and Richmond, so they will still be a regular sight off Putney Embankment and Chiswick.
The old base was a squeeze. At Chiswick the lifeboat shared a building with the Chiswick Pier Trust, with shared meeting rooms, kitchen and toilets. The kit room was a cupboard, and the 60 volunteers had to take their kit home after every shift.
The new station has more than ten times the floor space of the leased part of the Chiswick building. According to the RNLI it now has:
- a kit room with hanging space for every volunteer
- a dedicated meeting room for training sessions
- bunk and rest rooms for the duty and off duty crews
- an open plan crew room and galley for crews working 12 hour shifts
- a ground floor public engagement space with its own entrance, for water safety and education visits and retail, opening onto a river terrace in summer
What the planning file shows
The council’s planning register carries the part of the story the charity’s announcement does not. Application 2024/2572 sought a change of use at 90 Point Pleasant and Wandsworth Pier from flexible commercial use (Class E) to a lifeboat station, a category planners call Sui Generis, along with storage boxes on the pier.
It was registered on 1 August 2024 and approved with conditions on 18 September 2024. The register records it as a delegated decision, meaning officers signed it off rather than the Planning Applications Committee, with Ben Hayter as case officer and Avison Young acting as agent. The site is listed in Thamesfield ward.
Two further approvals followed this spring. Application 2026/1458, a non-material amendment registered on 21 April 2026, allowed the approved pathway and landscaping to be rebuilt as a straight line with a ramp. Application 2026/1457, registered on 30 April 2026, signed off the landscape and ecological enhancements required by condition 5 of the original permission. Both can be found by searching the proposal text on the council’s Planning Explorer.
The building, and the £3.5m
The RNLI bought the building in late 2023. It was originally the sales centre for the Riverside Quarter development, then offices, and the charity has said it needed a full refit before it could be used.
The cost has moved. The charity’s appeal page says the work rose from £2.9m to £3.5m, and names the reasons: inflation, the need to replace the external doors and glazing, and adding renewable technology to make the building more energy efficient. A bequest funded most of it. When the appeal opened on 4 November 2024, the RNLI said £300,000 was still needed, and the appeal is still taking donations. The charity is funded entirely by public donations and is independent of the Coastguard and government.
The crew is bigger than the boats suggest. The appeal page describes 65 seagoing volunteers and 25 shore volunteers, working 12 hour shifts at least twice a month, with a duty crew of four ready to launch in 90 seconds.
What it means for you
If you live or walk along the river between Wandsworth Bridge and Putney, the orange E-class lifeboats are now moored at the Riverside Quarter pier rather than at Chiswick. The station address is 90 Point Pleasant, Wandsworth, London SW18 1PP, and the station phone number is 0203 010 5046.
Visits are by appointment only, so do not turn up expecting a tour. The ground floor space is built for booked water safety and education groups, which is the part worth knowing if you run a school class, a scout group or a rowing club near the river.
In an emergency on the Thames the advice has not changed: dial 999 and ask for the Coastguard.
The move also matters for the rest of the borough, because the response time it buys is spent on the stretch of river that runs past Wandsworth, Battersea and Nine Elms. Bellamy put the risk plainly when the appeal opened: more than 20 people drown in the river every year, and the crew is dealing with “huge tides, fast-moving water, bridges, piers and constant river traffic” rather than open sea.
For other things changing on this side of the river, see our guides to roadworks and travel in Wandsworth and planning applications in the borough.
Sources: RNLI news releases of 21 September 2026, 31 July 2026 and 4 November 2024; the Wandsworth Riverside appeal page; the Wandsworth Riverside station page; and Wandsworth Council’s Planning Explorer records for applications 2024/2572, 2026/1457 and 2026/1458.
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