Oxford Street: Who should be in charge?

The Mayor appears to be on course to take control of "the nation's high street" but arguments about the issue are not over

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Sir Sadiq Khan is pressing ahead with his plans for changing Oxford Street after consultation responses showed strong support for the principle of pedestrianisation, and even more for the creation of a Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC) to put his ambitions into effect. But arguments about who should be in charge of “the nation’s high street” and its immediate surroundings have not gone away.

Already, they are central to the battle for control of Westminster City Council at next May's borough elections. And they raise enduring, tricky questions about which layer of government should have the most power over a part of Central London that is of huge importance to not only the part of Westminster in which it lies, but also to the capital as a whole and to the entire United Kingdom. Should the local council have the final say? Should the Mayor of London? When and how should national government intervene?

It is no secret that when the Labour Mayor, back in September, announced his intention to take control of the Oxford Street area, Labour-run Westminster City Council was not pleased. Invited to comment, a senior member of the administration told me, “We are too angry to speak”. The council’s statement noted that the Mayor's proposal had been shared with the council for the first time only a few day before being made public. It began rather pointedly, too:

"Westminster City Council has spent the last two years working closely with businesses and resident groups to develop detailed proposals to redesign and improve Oxford Street. These plans are shovel ready, have had the support of retailers and the local community and were intended to deliver significant economic growth whilst also securing a successful future for our thriving neighbourhoods in the West End."

The wording showed that in the marrow of the Oxford Street issue lies a tension between the interests of local residents and those of the city and the nation. The West End, of which Oxford Street is a key component, produces about three per cent of all UK economic output - an astonishing figure for an area covering only about eight square miles. But it is also a place of historic neighbourhoods, including Mayfair, Soho and Marylebone, containing a mix of phenomenally expensive private dwellings and more social housing than is often realised. For example, nearly a quarter of the roughly 8,600 homes in the West End electoral ward are for social rent.

In a letter to Mayor Khan and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, who had given Khan conspicuous backing, Westminster's Labour leader, Adam Hug, detailed the large amount of work his administration had done since winning power in the borough for the first time in its history in May, 2022, to try to resolve those conflicts with a solution acceptable to all - a solution that did not include pedestrianisation. Hug went on underline long-held concerns about increased traffic impacts on nearby residential streets, but also wanted to know from Khan and Rayner how, among other things, crime would be dealt with under the scheme, how disabled people would be affected, and how the voices of local residents would be heard.

The latter point went to the core of how Khan's intervention will - assuming, as now seems likely, it goes ahead - decisively reduce the influence of local people on planning decisions in their back yards. The objections of such residents, some of them highly-organised, well-connected and well-resourced, have long been a decisive in blocking the road to pedestrianisation. That was never more apparent than just days before the borough elections of May, 2018, when Westminster, at that time Conservative-run, withdrew from its collaboration with Transport for London and Khan's City Hall on putting a pedestrianisation programme together. Neighbourhood resistance was rising. The Tories bailed out. They also won the election.

Setting up an MDC insulates Khan's scheme against the political influence such localist insurrections can have. But is that right? Is it democratic? Is it fair?

Earlier this year, to the complete surprise of Labour colleagues, Paul Fisher, one of the Labour trio who won a clean sweep of West End ward in 2022, defected to the Conservatives. This followed Tim Barnes, who had been ousted by Labour in 2022, regaining one of the three seats for the Tories in a by-election.

Fisher told me he had found himself more aligned with Tory national policies than those of the Labour national government, notably on taxing businesses and borrowing. However, having already told the Labour group he would not be contesting a seat in 2026, he said he might have held fire had it not been for Khan's MDC idea. He described having opposed traffic restrictions, including any suggested for Oxford Street, as "a critical feature" of his ward campaign in 2022, one he had made very clear, including at a local hustings.

He added that the subsequent joint appearance at Ronnie Scott's jazz club of the Mayor, Rayner and Chancellor Rachel Reeves to announce that Khan may be given new powers to override local authority licensing decisions - something else that could turn out to displease West End residents - reinforced his conviction that, “Across the board, the Mayor of London and indeed the national government are unconcerned about the electoral future of the London Borough of Westminster. They don’t care if they lose.”

Fisher's dramatic move has not been the last to add intrigue and uncertainty the local electoral mix. Labour's three West End candidates for next year, already selected, are Patrick Lilley, now the sole Labour incumbent, Tim Lord, Soho resident and chair of the influential Soho Society, and Sarah Littleton, a community activist who has worked with Cities of London & Westminster MP, Rachel Blake.

Blake, who, last July, became the first Labour politician to win that prestigious seat, has expressed misgivings about the Mayor's actions too, telling an audience at a King's College event in February that she believed he could have limited himself to asking the government to let TfL become the highway authority for Oxford Street. All three Labour West End ward candidates say they "firmly oppose" the creation of an MDC. It seems West End ward voters will have a choice between two different slates of candidates who don't like what the Labour Mayor and Labour national government are doing to limit their power, including a Labour one.

The Tories have obvious reasons to be hopeful, though Reform UK might be a worry, even in such cosmopolitan, "metropolitan elite" territory: in hyper-marginal Lancaster Gate, Leila Cunningham, elected as a Tory in 2022, has just jumped ship to join Nigel Farage's crew, whose candidate took a 10 per cent share at the Vincent Square by-election in February.

Meanwhile, City Hall has announced that “detailed traffic and highway proposals” for developing the section of Oxford Street between its junctions with Great Portland Street east of Oxford Circus and Orchard Street, which runs along the west side of Selfridges, are to be published later this year, with a consultation to follow. It hopes the MDC will be established by New Year’s Day.

If it is, the stage would truly be set for some quite weird and unpredictable political campaigning in the centre of the capital next spring. The arena will be small, but the underlying issue will be huge. The West End is for West Enders, for London and for the country. But who should decide which takes precedence? Who should be in charge of its most famous street?