Oxford Street: Let Sadiq control Soho too, says leading local property boss

The managing director of Soho Estates has confirmed that he would welcome the Mayor's planned new powers reaching beyond Oxford Street itself

This article also appears at OnLondon.co.uk, my multi-contributor journalism website about the UK capital which paid subscribers here help to support. Why not join them?

A new intervention in the furore over who should decide the future of Oxford Street has intensified anxieties at Westminster Council about how large an area around the street itself Sadiq Khan might take control of with his proposed new Mayoral Development Corporation.

On Tuesday morning, an array of interested parties, including the Mayor, were sent a letter from John James, managing director of Soho Estates, a long-time major property-owner in the area famously active in the hospitality industries – restaurants, clubs, bars and so on.

Prefaced with a quote from Rachel Reeves about the new government’s commitment to economic growth, the letter makes a vigorous case against Labour-run Westminster’s attitude to West End businesses in general and emphasises the particular importance of Soho as a visitor attraction. It ends by applauding Mayor Khan “for introducing a Mayoral Development Corporation in Westminster”.

Note: not just for Oxford Street but “in Westminster”. Did that mean that James would like to see the boundary of the MDC embrace Soho along with Oxford Street itself? It certainly looked that way to leading councillors at Westminster. And now James has been good enough to confirm to On London that he would positively welcome such a move.

“I was as surprised as anybody that Sadiq Khan did what he did,” he says. “But if the West End is going to be more successful, and he says he wants to work with businesses, he’s got to be an improvement on what we’ve got.” He adds: “Soho is like every high street in the country – it’s struggling for it’s life.”

In part, James’s letter echoes disquiet being expressed elsewhere in the property sector about Westminster’s planning policies, which its critics regard as grudging and too restrictive towards development. However, the letter rebukes the council at greater length over its approach to licensing.

“The government wants to encourage growth and prosperity through engagement with the private sector,” it says, “and they and the GLA [Greater London Authority] want to promote London as a 24-hour International City. Sadly, the reality is much less attractive in Westminster”.

James’s letter expresses impatience with the progress of Westminster’s After Dark initiative, currently out for consultation, whose stated aim is to “create an inclusive evening and night-time plan” informed by residents, visitors, business owners and local community groups alike. And it accuses the council of “acting like a rural parish council” rather than “behaving like the most important local authority in the entire country”.

The letter is critical of particular councillors and claims some “are using planning and licensing powers to deliver entirely the opposite of encouraging anything after dark” and “appear overly influenced by a small group of local residents”. The latter, according to James’s letter, “seem resistant to preserving Soho’s diverse character and instead advocate for transforming this vibrant district into an insular village, disregarding its significant role within an international city”.

London’s existing MDCs, created for the Olympic Park and its environs and for the Old Oak and Park Royal regeneration zone, became the planning authorities for their respective areas at the expense of the boroughs affected. However, they did not assume powers over premises licensing.

When asked about it by On London, City Hall swiftly denied a rumour circulating among other interested parties that Khan has already asked the government if his MDC can take over licensing powers from the council and been turned down. Nonetheless, James believes that the shake-up an MDC would entail would be beneficial in that regard, describing how local authority planning and licensing powers can overlap to some degree.

James’s analysis of the impact of Westminster’s approach could hardly contrast more sharply with that of the council itself, which remains furious about Khan’s MDC initiative and sees its own Oxford Street strategy, born of a lengthy consensus-building exercise, as far more appropriate for a part of the capital where businesses and residents of many kinds have long co-existed.

Westminster Labour has always been against pedestrianisation, and senior councillors are concerned that introducing it along with a slackening of planning rules across a wider area under an MDC would turn the whole area into what one of them terms “party central”.

The fear is that this would lead to a further rise in property values, followed by large new buildings of a type some local voters objected to when Conservatives ran Westminster, and an exodus of wealthier residents, who would rent their properties for Air B&B use instead of living in them. The West End’s many social housing occupants, meanwhile, would just have to put up with it. The overall outcome, according to On London‘s Westminster source, is that the “villages” of Mayfair, Fitzrovia, Marylebone and, yes, Soho, “would all be killed”.

James’s letter also argues that “many operators are considering moving out because of Westminster’s obvious bias against them” and calls for more al fresco dining to be allowed, as happened as an emergency measure during the pandemic to help restaurateurs stay afloat.

James favours restrictions on cars to facilitate this, citing Camden’s policy towards Charlotte Street in his letter as one example of how to do it well. He writes: “I fear Alfresco has been politicalised and misinterpreted as a vote loser in Soho. In reality, we know from the pandemic and since, that many residents support alfresco and enjoyed it when it was in use.” Some residents, though, would disagree.

This new storyline in the Oxford Street saga has unfolded while the Mayor has been visiting New York. Yesterday he was taken on a stroll in New York City’s Times Square, saying its regeneration could be a model for what he wants to do with the world-famous London thoroughfare sometimes known as “the nation’s high street”. This saga has a long way yet to go.