Author: Henry Caldwell

A construction company has been fined more than £40,000 after a 19-year-old worker plunged to his death through an inadequately covered ventilation shaft at a West London building site in what a safety regulator has described as a wholly avoidable tragedy. Renols Lleshi was working on the 12th floor roof garden of a residential block under construction at the Ark Soane Academy site in Mill Hill Road, Acton, on 5 July 2023, when the covering beneath him gave way. He fell six floors and died at the scene. An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive found the ventilation shaft…

A former volunteer police officer has been sentenced to 24 years in prison after being convicted of a series of sexual offences, including the rape and assault of a child. Gwyn Samuels, who previously served as a Special Constable with the Metropolitan Police under the name James Bubb, was found guilty of five offences following a trial at Amersham Law Courts. Sentencing took place on Friday 20 March. Upon release, Samuels will serve a further eight years on licence and has been made subject to a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for life. The offences took place between January 2018 and…

London’s buses could face disruption on the same days as planned Underground strikes, after a second union launched a ballot for industrial action against Transport for London. Unite, which represents bus station and network traffic controllers employed by TfL, has begun a formal vote on strike action in a separate dispute over roster changes. The ballot closes on 13 April, and the union has warned that any resulting walkouts could fall on the same dates already earmarked by the RMT for Tube driver strikes later in the spring and summer. A Second Front Opens Up RMT members on the Underground…

A £20,000 reward is being offered by the Metropolitan Police for information that leads to the prosecution of whoever killed Daneche Tison, a 26-year-old shot dead in north-west London nearly three years ago. Mr Tison was wounded outside a block of flats on Bruckner Street, Queen’s Park, in the early hours of 19 July 2022. Officers who attended the scene were unable to locate him at the time, and he later made his way to hospital where he died from his injuries. Despite a number of arrests made in the years since, no one has ever been charged in connection…

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has laid out a step-by-step path back to EU membership, urging the Labour Party to make rejoining a central pledge at the next general election — a position that puts him well to the left of the government’s current stance on Brexit. Speaking to La Repubblica Magazine, Khan argued that the economic and social damage caused by leaving the EU is now beyond dispute, and that full membership is ultimately unavoidable. He framed the question not as whether Britain will return, but how long it will take to get there. A Five-Stage Plan Back Into the…

Cocaine, MDMA and thousands of pounds in cash have been recovered from addresses in two north London boroughs following a series of police raids targeting County Lines drug networks. The operation, carried out on Wednesday, saw Metropolitan Police officers execute warrants across Camden and Islington as part of a continuing intelligence-led effort to break up organised crime groups operating in the capital. Three men, aged between 25 and 32, were arrested at the scene and remained in custody following the raids. The trio face suspicion of offences including being concerned in the supply of Class A drugs, possession with intent…

Planned strikes on the London Underground later this month have been suspended after the RMT union agreed to enter fresh talks with London Underground management — but the union has made clear the underlying dispute is far from finished. The walkouts, which had been scheduled to run from Tuesday 24 March through to Friday 27 March, will no longer go ahead after both sides indicated a willingness to return to the negotiating table. However, the RMT stressed the broader disagreement has not been settled, and passengers should not assume the disruption is over. Strike action pencilled in for April remains…

A police cordon closed a section of Selhurst Road in South Norwood during the early hours of Wednesday morning, with officers seen blocking the junction near Freddy’s Chicken restaurant.Metropolitan Police vehicles were stationed at the scene shortly after 6am, with tape sealing off the road in both directions. Pedestrians and drivers were unable to pass through the affected area.The nature of the incident has not yet been confirmed by the Metropolitan Police. London chronicle has contacted the Met for a statement and will update this article when details are released.

More than 200 families whose children attended a north-west London nursery where a paedophile staff member carried out systematic abuse are calling for a formal investigation into how it was allowed to happen — but say they are being passed between agencies unwilling to act. Vincent Chan, a worker at Bright Horizons nursery in West Hampstead, was jailed last month for 18 years after pleading guilty to 56 sexual offences. He had filmed himself abusing young children in his care and had accumulated a collection of at least 26,000 indecent images, including footage of children being raped. A judge said…

Scotland Yard has taken down an online drug marketplace after officers spent months quietly working inside the platform, gathering the data needed to identify those running and using it. AEGIS Marketplace, which allowed dealers to list illegal drugs for purchase using cryptocurrency, had built up 30 active sellers and an estimated 10,000 completed transactions in under a year before the Metropolitan Police moved to seize it. Based on that volume, investigators put the site’s annual turnover at close to £2 million. The Met’s Cyber Crime Unit first became aware of the platform in June 2025. Over the following months, officers…