Rivercourt Road

Some History

Rivercourt Road was built in the late nineteenth century as a north - south residential road between King Street, Hammersmith and the Thames at Upper Mall.

In 1905 the Royal Commission on London Traffic recommended (paragraph 79) that King Street, Hammersmith be widened to 100 feet as part of the improvement of the approach to central London from the west along the Hammersmith and Kensington Roads.

By 1910 the successor body, the London Traffic Branch of the Board of Trade, had decided that the costs of widening Hammersmith Road along its length would be disproportionate to the benefit and that it would be far better to extend Cromwell Road westwards to Hammersmith where it should cross Hammersmith Bridge Road and then

be continued westwards across River Court Road and past St Peter's Church, then turning more to the south-west it should cross Chiswick Lane ...

In 1936 the London and Middlesex (Improvements &c.) Act gave compulsory purchase powers to Councils for the route and offered a grant of 60% of the costs of building the road. The route was included in the Bressey Report (1937) and the County of London Plan (1943).

By the time work began on the route in the late 1950s, it had therefore been known for 20 years that Rivercourt Road would be severed by the Great West Road, with the plans going back another 25 years.

Initially the junction between Rivercourt Road and Great West Road was a cross-roads, but by 1968 the central reservation had been made continuous. Legally, Rivercourt Road remains a single road, but the parts north and south of Great West Road are now, in effect, separate roads. Their unity can be seen in TfL's property asset register, which shows the full width of Rivercourt Road cutting across the Great West Road as land which TfL does not own (but which it does control).

The fact that Rivercourt Road legally continues across Great West Road means that references in traffic orders to "Rivercourt Road" cannot be taken to refer to the part which lies north of Great West Road unless the context enables this to be identified.

In [when?] Hammersmith & Fulham made the section of Rivercourt Road between Great West Road and King Street one-way northbound.

TMO 2037

On 18 September 2024 H&F made TMO 2037: The Hammersmith & Fulham (Rivercourt Road) (Prescribed Routes) Order. This amended the then-current Consolidated TMO 1878: The Hammersmith and Fulham (Prescribed Routes) (Consolidation) Traffic Order 2023.

TMO 2037 sought to lift the one-way northbound restriction and instead impose two separate restrictions:

one-way northbound for all vehicles (including cycles) from Great West Road to the start of two-way Rivercourt Road;
only buses, taxis, cycles and H&F permit holders permitted to pass from Great West Road to two-way Rivercourt Road.

The intention was that any vehicle could enter Rivercourt Road from King Street and pass southbound, turn round north of the junction with Great West Road and then return northbound to King Street, exiting there.

Status of Great West Road as a GLA Road

Great West Road is a Greater London Authority (GLA) Road and is managed by Transport for London (TfL). This means that, although part of it lies in Hammersmith & Fulham, the Council has no control over it. It is, in effect, a foreign country.

Moreover, Hammersmith & Fulham lies below TfL in the hierarchy of traffic authorities. The relationship between a London borough and TfL is set out in section 121B of Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984:

(1) No London borough council shall exercise any power under this Act in a way which will affect, or be likely to affect,—

(a) a GLA road ...

unless the requirements of subsections (2) and (3) below have been satisfied.

(2) The first requirement is that the council has given notice of the proposal to exercise the power in the way in question—

(a) to Transport for London ...

(3) The second requirement is that—

(a) the proposal has been approved

(i) in the case of a GLA road, by Transport for London; or

(b) the period of one month beginning with the date on which Transport for London ... received notice of the proposal has expired without Transport for London or the council having objected to the proposal; or

(d) where an objection has been made by Transport for London ... and not withdrawn, the Greater London Authority has given its consent to the proposal after consideration of the objection.

This legislation matters, because Hammersmith & Fulham's changes to Rivercourt Road directly affected Great West Road.

Rivercourt Road had been used as an exit to King Street, so closing it to most vehicles increased the amount of traffic using the exit to Hammersmith Broadway. That would increase the chances that vehicles queuing on the slip road to the roundabout would extend back onto the eastbound carriageway of Great West Road.

The exit from Great West Road to Rivercourt Road had been a slip road along which traffic flowed freely. It was changed to a road which was legally a minor road. Traffic on this minor road was required to give way to vehicles which had come south on Rivercourt Road and which were performing three-point turns before returning north. Such vehicles would become visible to drivers of vehicles leaving Great West Road only at the last moment, so unexpected sharp braking might occur.

Other issues would arise where drivers reached the signs indicating that they were prohibited from entering Rivercourt Road and then sought to return to Great West Road and continue eastbound. Drivers might also come south on Rivercourt Road and pass the No Entry signs to join Great West Road. All of these changes increased the chances of accidents, which have occurred.

H&F's Acts and The Presumption of Regularity

TfL have confirmed that H&F did not give the requisite notice before making the traffic order and implementing their works:

Our Streets Asset Operations team did not receive any notice or correspondence from the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham relating to their TMO 2037.

Our Streets Asset Operations team did not authorise the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham to place road markings or erect traffic sign on the TLRN.

The works included removing TfL's edge-of-carriageway road markings from Great West Road at the start of the exit slip road to Rivercourt Road and painting their own road markings on the exit slip road.

These actions were on TfL's highway and were manifestly unlawful. H&F's actions on Rivercourt Road, such as painting the Give Way lines, also directly affected traffic on TfL's highway and so were unlawful without prior notice to TfL. Likewise with H&F's making of TMO 2037. All these actions were without notice to TfL and were therefore unlawful. They vitiate the Presumption of Regularity, which normally applies to the activities of public bodies such as councils. H&F's assertions to an adjudicator need to be backed by substantive evidence as their actions in this matter contrary to s.121B of RTRA 1984 have lifted the Presumption of Regularity.

Administrative Law and Ultra Vires

Hammersmith and Fulham Council do not have the legal power to make changes to TfL's roads. They did so, to the exit slip road from Great West Road to Rivercourt Road. Those actions were ultra vires, i.e. beyond their powers. Administrative law dictates that such acts are legally null, i.e. it is as if they do not exist. Yet those acts were done and the road markings on the exit slip road are now those placed by H&F.

That creates a conundrum as to what the effects are of such acts which manifest themselves in road markings but which legally are null. The proposal by Christopher Forsyth in The Golden Metwand ...

Implementation of TMO 2037

The plan below shows the work which H&F envisaged that their contractor, F M Conway, would have to do to the north of the junction between Great West Road and Rivercourt Road.

The numbers inside circles are diagram numbers from The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016 (TSRGD 2016). The traffic signs are listed in various schedules which are organised by the type of sign, e.g. warnings; regulatory requirements. If you only know the diagram number, it's much easier to find it by searching in a single file of the entire regulations. This link is to a single .pdf file of the entire regulations as originally enacted.

The changes were implemented overnight on 20/21 November 2024. H&F weren't satisfied with F M Conway's work: in particular, the Give Way triangle and Give Way lines were painted about 1m south of where the plans showed. The image below shows the signage at the end of November 2024:

H&F produced revised plans which F M Conway used to erase the wrongly-placed road markings and place correct ones. The plan below is an annotated excerpt from these revised plans, which are dated 3 December 2024, approved January 2025.

The conventions of this plan are as follows:

shaded areas:

pale blue: TfL's highway land
pale red: H&F's highway land
grey: crossover or dropped kerb
striped blue-grey: tactile paving
white: non-highway land (the land immediately to the north of the pale blue land is laid to flowerbeds or is otherwise decorative and so is not highway land; it was compulsorily acquired by LCC and TfL's property register does not include it, so it appears to be H&F's

red lines and text represent proposed changes:

thick lines adjacent to "SP" are upright traffic signs on a sign post
other thick lines are white lines 150mm wide
thinner lines near kerb are yellow lines
other text and graphics on road are road markings in white

numbers in circles (red for new; black for existing) represent diagram numbers in the Traffic Signs Regulations for upright traffic signs. The most important are:

616: No Entry
619: Motor Vehicles Prohibited aka "flying motorcycle"
652: One Way Traffic
670: Speed limit

thin lines with arrows at each end and numbers to 1 decimal place are measured distances in meters

capital letters

B: bollard
LC: lamp column (with number)
SP: signpost

H&F are wrong in their identification of TfL's highway land: the section of footway on the west side of Rivercourt Road north of the lime-green line is part of H&F's highway (i.e. they control its surface and can place utilities beneath it).

The image below shows the signage as it was on 7 July 2025:

Details of TMO 2037

Under the Consolidated TMO, Rivercourt Road was one-way northbound for all vehicles (including cycles) from Great West Road to King Street. There were also HGV and parking restrictions, but they need not concern us.

This amended the then-extant TMO to change the restriction on Rivercourt Road between King Street and Great West Road from

south-to-north between Great West Road and King Street

south-to-north between Great West Road and a point and a point 8.30 meters south of the southern building wall of No. 17 Rivercourt Road.

That section of Rivercourt Road which was subject to the south-to-north restriction was further restricted so that the only motor vehicles which could traverse it were:

those with a valid permit;
buses, local buses and taxis;
other vehicles undertaking vatious statutory duties;
ambulance, fire brigade and police.

By implication, Rivercourt Road north of the point 8.30m south of the southern boundary wall of No. 17, Rivercourt Road, became two-way.

The lifting of the existing restriction and the imposition of the first of the new restrictions was the subject of paragraph 6 of the TMO and its Schedule. It sought to define a new one-way south-to-north restriction which replaced the old one.

Paragraphs 4 and 5 of the TMO were intended to impose the separate restriction on which vehicles can turn off Great West Road onto Rivercourt Road. There are some issues with these paragraphs, but they may have the effect which H&F intended. They are represented by the "flying motorcycle" sign with its Except plate (note that the one-way sign beneath this is part of the paragraph 6 restriction, not paragraphs 4 and 5).

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse