"Central London" vs "London"

[qwertyK]

I was always under the impression that "Central London" only appeared on road signs within Greater London.

However if you drive through a lot of Surrey, areas within the M25 but not within Greater London, the signs all say "C.London" or "Central London".

Whilst I've seen other signs within Greater London which simply say "London"

What is the convention for this?

[SouthWest Philip]

I was always under the impression that "Central London" only appeared on road signs within Greater London.

However if you drive through a lot of Surrey, areas within the M25 but not within Greater London, the signs all say "C.London" or "Central London".

Whilst I've seen other signs within Greater London which simply say "London"

What is the convention for this?

I suspect the convention is that the M25 is the de facto boundary for London rather than local government boundaries.

[jnty]

I was always under the impression that "Central London" only appeared on road signs within Greater London.

However if you drive through a lot of Surrey, areas within the M25 but not within Greater London, the signs all say "C.London" or "Central London".

Whilst I've seen other signs within Greater London which simply say "London"

What is the convention for this?

I suspect the convention is that the M25 is the de facto boundary for London rather than local government boundaries.

And it makes a lot of sense, because once you're inside the M25 the best way to parts of London may be turning around, and very quickly all possibly onward routes lead to places that might reasonably be called 'London'.

It also makes a lot of sense if London is now meant to be "(M25)" on trunk road signage - there's clearly no point in signing that once you're past the M25.

[qwertyK]

I was always under the impression that "Central London" only appeared on road signs within Greater London.

However if you drive through a lot of Surrey, areas within the M25 but not within Greater London, the signs all say "C.London" or "Central London".

Whilst I've seen other signs within Greater London which simply say "London"

What is the convention for this?

I suspect the convention is that the M25 is the de facto boundary for London rather than local government boundaries.

But in say, parts of essex within the M25 its labelled "london", eg, on the M11, in loughton, abridge etc.

[Nathan_A_RF]

It would make sense for "Central London" to be used within the Greater London boundary, and "London" elsewhere, however there's no distinction on the primary destination list
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... -route.pdf

[KeithW]

I have always regarded the boundaries of central London to be the A501 to the north, A1202/Commercial Street in the east and A205 to the west. South of the river all bets are off - to me its bandit country but then I lived in north London

[MotorwayGuy]

There have been threads on this before. Generally "London" on its own doesn't appear within the M25. For example here the A2 is signed as just London at the M25 junction, with the next junction having Central London as a forward destination. It's a bit silly because if you wanted for example North London, you'd probably have wanted to come off before this point. It's all inconsistent though with M25 Junction 2 being signed as "(SE & C)" but the A20 at junction 3 just has "London". Coming in from the M20 side of junction 3 though does give you the option of C or SE, not sure if there are any others where this happens but I'm sure there used to be.

[Bryn666]

LTN 1/94 never sorted this out, and recent efforts to create that ludicrous "(M25)" situation have made things worse. It's very telling that literally nobody is following that guidance, as all new signs on the radial routes out of London still say, er, London. We've covered this many times before but the simple answer is to reintroduce "LONDON" as a regional destination, then once you hit the M25 traffic can be split around it as necessary into the compass sectors with more local destinations taking over as you leave the TfL network.

"Central London" is typically taken to mean The City or Westminster, so I'd argue that all signing that takes you to the Inner Ring Road (can we finally renumber the entire thing as A100 so it makes some sort of sense as a boundary, and declassify all A/B roads within it) should say this before it splits out into more local destinations.

[the cheesecake man]

Coming in from the M20 side of junction 3 though does give you the option of C or SE, not sure if there are any others where this happens but I'm sure there used to be.

A1 at Huntingdon: stay on the A1 for C & W, take the A14 for E.

[wallmeerkat]

Would individual areas of London not be signed, or is that just within central London? (eg. turn left for "Elephant and Castle" https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4961439 ... ?entry=ttu )

[RichardA35]

Would individual areas of London not be signed, or is that just within central London? (eg. turn left for "Elephant and Castle" https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4961439 ... ?entry=ttu )

London Signage - I drove from Twickenham to East Dulwich recently and I'm unsure I saw any useful signs. I certainly didn't use any.

[Bryn666]

Would individual areas of London not be signed, or is that just within central London? (eg. turn left for "Elephant and Castle" https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4961439 ... ?entry=ttu )

London Signage - I drove from Twickenham to East Dulwich recently and I'm unsure I saw any useful signs. I certainly didn't use any.

London Borough signs are certainly amongst some of the worst in the UK, if not Europe...

[Vierwielen]

There have been threads on this before. Generally "London" on its own doesn't appear within the M25. For example here the A2 is signed as just London at the M25 junction, with the next junction having Central London as a forward destination. It's a bit silly because if you wanted for example North London, you'd probably have wanted to come off before this point. It's all inconsistent though with M25 Junction 2 being signed as "(SE & C)" but the A20 at junction 3 just has "London". Coming in from the M20 side of junction 3 though does give you the option of C or SE, not sure if there are any others where this happens but I'm sure there used to be.

The M3 is particularly bad in this respect. When approaching the M25, anybody who is going into Central London will take the M25 (north) and then either the A30 (Great West Road), the M4 or the M40 while anybody going to Wimbledon, Wandsworth or anywhere in that part of London will take the M25 (south) and use the A3. Goingf srtaight on is OK for Richmon and Twickenham.