Contractors have started digging on the slipway beside Putney Bridge, the first work on the ground for a new river pier that was meant to be finished three years ago.
The digging is the last technical step before construction of the Putney Bridge Pier, a second pier alongside the existing one, which Uber Boat by Thames Clippers has been trying to build since 2022. The Marine Management Organisation granted the marine licence on 6 July, and it runs until 2029.
For anyone who uses the river at Putney, or who fought the scheme when it first appeared, it is the clearest sign yet that the pier is going to happen.
What is happening on the slipway
The contractor, A2 Site Investigation, is digging trial pits, small holes that show what is under the ground. They are looking for three things: how far down the loose rubble and fill goes before solid ground starts, what the old stone wall along the edge of the slipway is built on, and where the pipes and cables run.
That matters because of how the pier will be anchored. It rests on a steel column drilled into the riverbed hard against that wall. To drill it, engineers first have to build a temporary platform of compacted stone on the slipway, strong enough to hold an excavator and a drilling rig.
Neither Wandsworth Council nor the Environment Agency will approve that platform until they are shown exactly how it will be built, how deep the piling goes and what is underneath. None of that can be written without digging first.
| Stage | From | To |
|---|---|---|
| Approvals still outstanding | August 2026 | September 2026 |
| Piling and dredging | September 2026 | October 2026 |
| Steelwork built off site | October 2026 | January 2027 |
| Installing bridge and pontoon | January 2027 | April 2027 |
| Pier opens | April 2027 | |
The Environment Agency raised the point in December, when it objected on flood defence grounds. The old river wall is not itself a flood defence, but the structures behind it are, and the agency warned that damaging or destabilising the wall could increase flood risk. It asked for the platform design, for surveys of the wall before and after, and for monitoring while the pile goes in.
Wandsworth wants much the same thing. Its Condition 14 bars any works on the pier’s foundations, temporary or permanent, until the council has approved a method setting out where the plant will stand, how deep the piling will go and how buried water pipes will be protected. And the related Condition 15 covers the connection to the land.
Thames Clippers’ case for the new pier is that the old one does not work well enough. In its licence application it says the existing Putney Pier falls short of modern accessibility rules because the gangway is too steep, and that it is regularly restricted at the highest tides, when the river path floods.
Thames Clippers says it would also let it run a more frequent off-peak and weekend service to Putney. The company already runs a parcel boat, delivering for DHL from Wandsworth Riverside Quarter but that pier has no cover, narrow gangways, and shared access with houseboats. So when the new pier is in place, it will move operations to Putney, starting at one run a day.
The existing pier is not going anywhere. It is due to be refurbished, and the company has told regulators that without the new structure, river access at Putney would be lost while that work happens.
When the pier went to planning, 74 people objected and five wrote in support, and British Rowing and Olympic rowers warned it would interfere with the Boat Race course.
What still has to happen
Four things stand between the trial pits and the first pile.
Wandsworth has to sign off Conditions 14 and 15. The Environment Agency has to be satisfied, either by lifting its objection or through its own flood risk permit. The Port of London Authority still has to issue a river works licence, which it has not done, and which the developer expected to have a year ago. And the Marine Management Organisation has to be told five working days before anything starts, with the contractor named 24 hours ahead. No such notice has been filed.
The riverbed also has to be dug out. The licence allows 620 cubic metres of clay to be dredged so the pontoon can sit properly and boats can come alongside. That was the sticking point for most of this year: government scientists found the company’s contamination data dated from 2010 and demanded fresh samples, which is why a survey vessel worked the river in March. The new results went to the regulator on 7 July, the day after the licence was granted.
Timing now matters. The developer’s construction programme bars piling and dredging between early February and early July – it’s not clear why but Natural England has warned that the work could affect migratory fish, including salmon and sea trout, and asked the regulator to consider timing restrictions, though nothing in the licence itself sets a season.
If the piling starts this autumn, it is about seven weeks of drilling and dredging, then twelve weeks with the site empty while the steelwork is built off site, then fourteen weeks lifting it into place and testing it. Thirty-four weeks from the first pile to a working pier, on the developer’s own programme, which points to Putney getting its second pier in the first half of 2027. Miss this autumn and the closed season pushes the whole sequence into early 2028.
When Thames Clippers applied for planning permission, it told Wandsworth it expected the pier to be complete by September 2023.
Its own construction programme, submitted with the licence application last year, had the pier tested, commissioned and handed over on 24 July 2026. That date passed last month with no construction started. The marine licence itself arrived nine months later than the company planned, and the river works licence it expected in August 2025 is still outstanding.
What you can do
The marine licence, the decision letter and the full list of conditions are public. Search the Marine Management Organisation’s public register for case reference MLA/2025/00385.
Wandsworth’s planning file, including the conditions and everything submitted to discharge them, sits under application 2022/2916 on the council’s planning site. Condition 14 is the one to watch.
Anyone unhappy with the licence can appeal it. Appeals go to the Planning Inspectorate and the window runs for six months from 6 July, closing in early January.
Your local councillors can ask the council where Conditions 14 and 15 stand. Putney Embankment falls in Thamesfield ward.
