I read with interest Joshua Oliver’s despatch from Cannes where the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, was attending the property industry’s annual conference (Interview, March 20).
Khan told Oliver that local residents were “dictating” how Oxford Street should develop and it was the residents that had ruled out his own favoured intervention — pedestrianisation.
In fact, the detailed plans to improve Oxford Street, which had to be abandoned following the mayor’s announcement in September, reflected two years of hard work and consensus building involving local council, the property industry, businesses large and small who had agreed to fund it, the New West End Company, a partnership of 600 UK and international retailers, restaurateurs, hoteliers, galleries and property owners, and the Business Improvement District body — plus two residents who were invited to watch the process develop. I was one of the residents. To suggest that we were doing any “dictating” is laughable.
The mayor has now issued a consultation on the establishment of a “mayoral development corporation” under the Localism Act in order to take planning and control of the traffic on Oxford Street away from Westminster’s elected Labour councillors in favour of himself and eight business leaders, selected by him. It’s a bit of a stretch as the act is intended to empower local communities, not intentionally and expensively ignore them, and development corporations are meant to do development — this one won’t as Oxford Street is already developed.
His argument that only he can help because Oxford Street crosses a borough boundary is also misleading. All of Oxford Street sits happily in Westminster. Its only by drawing a map for the new MDC that randomly includes New Oxford Street (which is not in fact to be pedestrianised) that he can tick that box.
While keen to interfere in Westminster Labour councillors’ well supported plans, he appears to do very little to get rid of the “American candy shops”, which are not a result of the buses and taxis that currently drive past them on Oxford Street. Candy shops are paying higher rents than real shops which is why property companies are happy to have them as tenants and look the other way when the rent is paid in cash.
As the mayor is in charge of policing it would be to everyone’s benefit if he abandoned his MDC plans, left the council to get on with improving Oxford Street and implementing its plan, and spent more of his time dealing with crime issues, with 30,000 reported crimes a year in the West End where 80 per cent of the victims are visitors to the capital.
Tim Lord
Chair, The Soho Society, London W1, UK
