Goldfinches do seem to be a lot commoner in many urban areas I've visited in recent years, and woodpigeons are now well habituated to the urban environment - certainly I see them more frequently than collared doves, which seem quite localised (in the sense of, e.g. one end of a street having them, the other just woodpigeons).
With house sparrows there has clearly been a well evidenced decline in Britain, but my impression mirrors Andy's that they seem to be on the rebound in recent years. In my partner's former garden in central Northumberland house sparrows didn't feature at all until the last ca. 4-5 years, although they were present elsewhere in the village - then they moved in and started breeding, evidence to me of a local range expansion. In my village in NW Durham they've remained common, with tree sparrows occasional.
Now my partner is living in an urban fringe location in SE Northumberland, she's only had a couple of house sparrows in the garden, which bears out Nutcracker's comments - but encouragingly, tree sparrows are regular visitors.
Obviously these are just anecdotal observations, so it will be interesting to see what BTO population trends show for these species.
