Can a ‘liveable’ London street become a forbidding precinct?

Some residents suspect that bold changes to traffic regulation on Tottenham Court Road have had unintended consequences

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Don’t yell at me. Don’t take offence. I’m just asking some questions in need of carefully-considered answers. My starting point is a fire that took place last Sunday night, halfway along Tottenham Court Road at its junction with Torrington Place. It wasn’t a building fire. It was, in part, a tent fire – the tent of a person with no home. Fitzrovia News reports that encampments of such tents have become a feature of the famous London street. This is, of course, a symptom of a social problem. It has also created one.

A year ago, at the north end of the road, 11 tents used by rough sleepers were removed from outside University College London Hospital (UCLH) premises on Huntley Street. The hospital had asked for this because of public health concerns. Then, over the summer, a public meeting was held at Tottenham Court Road’s American International Church, where local residents expressed disquiet about the newer settlement, the one where Sunday’s fire took place. One wrote to a Camden councillor about its effect on neighbourhood life.

“The ongoing anti-social behaviour exhibited by some of these individuals, including loud disturbances during late hours, public intoxication and threatening use of language, creates an environment of fear and anxiety for those going about their daily business.”

“Constant vigilance” had become normal when walking nearby, the author went on, with bicycle theft, graffiti and other delinquencies rife. The email continued:

“It is essential that Camden. along with the police, takes action to restore safety and peace for all residents an visitors to the neighbourhood. Otherwise, it is only a matter of time before someone is seriously injured.”

Serious injury was avoided on Sunday night, but only just. As well as a tent, a pile of rubbish burned and an electrical display board was damaged by the flames.

How did this whole situation come to pass? Rough sleeping in London has risen as a whole. And it is nothing new in this part of town: I recall seeing a row of tents on Euston Road by Warren Street station early one morning in 2020, on my way to an encounter with Rory Stewart.

And, of course, people who end up living on streets anywhere do so for a variety of reasons, among them housing shortages, mental health traumas, family breakdown, immigration status and addiction. But have particular local policies enabled it to flourish, along with a more general degradation of the street’s social environment?

One argument, guaranteed to start a road rage fight, is that Camden’s bold changes to Tottenham Court Road’s traffic rules have had some unintended consequences. Since March 2021, much of the street has been reserved for buses and bicycles between 8am and 7pm. This change was part of the council’s West End Project, which also saw the road become two-way, along with the parallel Gower Street.

The purpose of the scheme was to do away with a longstanding gyratory system, reduce the use of private motor vehicles, improve air quality and make the area more pleasant for residents and shoppers. The following year, a monitoring report by consultants Aecom said there had indeed been reductions in traffic on Tottenham Court Road and streets to its east, an increase in cycling and fewer fumes.

But have those successes had a downside? There is a view that taking private motor vehicles out of Tottenham Court Road has simply diverted it on to some others. As Fitzrovia News noted at the time of the Aecom report’s appearance, its study area excluded Maple Street, part of a patch to the west of Tottenham Court Road that one local person wryly describes as having become a “high traffic neighbourhood”.

Then there is the emptiness. Arguments for cutting traffic on streets with a retail function, which Tottenham Court Road has long had, typically maintain that reducing the noise and emissions of motor cars results in more people being drawn to their shops and cafés, the pavements bustling with greater life than before.

But what if instead the space starts feeling, at least at times, a bit eerie? A bit deserted? What if its new tranquility makes it more conducive to pitching a tent and fashioning a makeshift home, perhaps joining others already there and attracting more, accumulating detritus and possessions?

Suddenly, you have a pop-up settlement: a community of sorts, with a way of life, appetites and needs. It can constitute a market, one that drug-dealers compete to serve. Some of its members are helpless and harmless. Others engage in panhandling, public nuisance and petty crime. Suddenly, that vision of al fresco vibrancy starts to be compromised by a sadder, bleaker, more uneasy reality.

Once a tent cluster is established, what should be done about it? Camden learned the hard way that sympathy for the plight of rough sleepers can punish those who move them on. A furore followed the council’s involvement in clearing the street outside UCLH, where some had been living for many months. Social media footage spread and heart-rending stories were told. An admission of guilt was extracted. Sadiq Khan declared himself “appalled“.

In May, Camden was again criticised for removing rough sleepers from the doorstep of its own Town Hall. But could it really be expected to do nothing? If not, what was the right way to proceed? The council has reviewed its rough sleeper approach and recommendations have been made, but this problem won’t be easily solved, as Sunday night’s incident showed. It presents difficult dilemmas: do nothing on and around Tottenham Court Road and a “liveable” street ideal starts resembling a forbidding precinct; tolerate and service, and you might almost be founding a shanty town.

There are plenty of opinion about Camden’s policies for streets, often clashing and firmly held. Some believe there is a causal link between the removal of traffic from Tottenham Court Road and the perpetuation, perhaps the acceleration, of a general state of decline. The proposition is contested and difficult to prove. But as City Hall puts its mind to pedestrianising Oxford Street just round the corner, it should not be quickly dismissed.