The trend started with the hideously bright vape shop that arrived a few months ago. Now it seems every business wants in on the LED arms race.
At 160-162 Putney High Street, the building that secured controversial planning permission for a gambling centre despite 624 objections, Admiral has applied for “display of internally illuminated fascia and projecting signs” (application 2026/0256). The same premises is simultaneously seeking a gambling licence, suggesting the business is optimistic about its prospects.
Further down at 88-90 Putney High Street, Chipotle is trying again after their first attempt failed. Application 2026/0137 seeks two digital LCD display screens, presumably to match the Chicken Shop opposite. When their initial application (2026/0016) at the start of the year was ruled invalid, they simply filed a new one.
Even Tiny Feet, the new pram store at 60 Putney High Street, wants in. Application 2026/0003 requests two externally illuminated fascia signs plus installation of two 55-inch digital LCD screens centred on windows.
The council will probably approve them all
They are almost certain to get permission, because seemingly every shop on Putney High Street already has LCD signs. They are giant versions of the devices we carry around with us all day, desperately trying to entice us inside.
It is modern retail, after all. And the council has been approving these applications for years, despite its own 1988 Shopfronts guidance suggesting that “internally illuminated box fascias and projecting box signs can be particularly obtrusive” and warning they “can harm the appearance of the shop, the character of the street or residential amenity.”
That was written in an era when people thought about visual pollution. Now we have more pressing concerns.
Symptoms of a High Street in crisis
You cannot really blame businesses for wanting to yell about themselves through LCD screens. Putney High Street is currently a building site, with not one, not two, not three, but four active worksites competing for space.
The carriageway expansion work opposite TK Maxx, the hotel demolition accelerating at the junction corner, and various utilities projects have turned the area into an obstacle course. Construction barriers, excavation equipment, and protective sheeting dominate the streetscape.
Heavy traffic does not help. The constant stream of vehicles means people zoom past rather than stroll and browse. The £1 million junction redesign that made everything worse has not exactly encouraged lingering.
When you get plenty of footfall but people are not actually entering shops, desperation sets in. LCD screens become the retail equivalent of standing outside shouting “please notice me” above the din of pneumatic drills and idling buses.
It is a pitiful sight, really. Businesses reduced to screaming for attention because the High Street itself has become too chaotic for normal commerce.
Looking forward to quieter times
Perhaps there will come a day when businesses decide to take the screens down. When Putney High Street recovers from its construction phase and people can actually pause to look in windows without navigating around barriers or breathing dust.
When the junction works properly, when traffic flows rather than queues, when the street becomes a place for browsing rather than rushing through. When businesses realise that people are peeking in again, rather than zooming by.
That would be nice. Until then, welcome to Putney High Street: the LED capital of southwest London.
It’s like a visual assault, as more and more shops, supermarkets, even banks! assault us aurally by playing music.
Quiet thought and contemplation are never to be permitted, now I rush out of shops having made a necessary purchase, never browse, never stroll down a high street….
Thank you for this article Kieran. There are also a few on the Lower Richmond Road too – utterly ghastly and completely ruining the aesthetic of the area. What is even more dubious is when one does a little investigatory work into the so-called owners of some of these vape shop stores.