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Last month, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan announced plans to ban all traffic from Oxford Street. The proposals would pedestrianise the roads between Marble Arch and Oxford Circus and restrict traffic along the street towards Tottenham Court Road, in a bid to help with overcrowding and to regenerate the area.
Now, it looks like Soho wants in on the action. Local business owners are calling on Sadiq Khan to include the area in the plans and to introduce pedestrianised or low traffic areas.
The call comes from the Soho Business Alliance (SBA), a body which represents around 150 local businesses. In a letter to the Mayor’s office, it wrote:
‘In a very similar way to Oxford Street, Soho has suffered with years of neglect in terms of highway maintenance and public realm improvement.
‘The pavements are narrow and inaccessible, the lighting is poor in places making it feel unsafe for vulnerable groups, in particular for women and girls, there is limited opportunity for on street surveillance because of the narrow pavements and CCTV has been completely removed from the busiest streets.’
The SBA also claimed that Soho’s pavements were not wide enough for pushchairs and wheelchairs and highlighted the lack of outside dining space (remember when Soho had that for a bit in 2020?).
Not everyone is on board with the proposals, though. Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, cabinet member at Westminster City Council, said that the SBA does not accurately represent all businesses in the area: ‘Some major Soho businesses were not even asked for their views before the letter was sent to the mayor,’ he wrote on X.
Geoff Barraclough, Westminster cabinet member for planning and economic development, said to the BBC that Soho is not going to ‘lose out’ and the local council would ‘oppose any plan to remove democratic control from the area.’
So, could Soho be pedestrianised? Not anytime soon. We’ll have to wait a while to find out what happens: the Oxford Street plans are part of a move which would give the Mayor new planning powers in the proposed Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC), which first needs to go through statutory consultation and get approval from the London Assembly. More details are expected in early 2025, so watch this space.
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