I think they tend not to do themselves any favours in their approach (or maybe lack thereof) to engaging with media, but I am an annoyingly pro-YIMBY, pro-nightlife Soho resident and even I have to acknowledge lots of their complaints are broadly correct. Soho is not unique in the lack of infrastructure it has to deal with nightlife, but it is probably unique in the density of that nightlife, so the problems residents face are massively magnified. There is an unemptied temporary urinal that leaks rivers of piss across the street, placed near my front door every weekend - I think my experience of busy Soho weekends as a resident would be improved tenfold immediately if the council just semi regularly emptied the urinal while it was up. As it is the council is just proposing adding another urinal to the street to cope with increased footfall; residents across the area will all have similar stories of things that could easily be fixed with minimal work from the council, but that are largely just ignored and worsened by many of the councils decisions.
there are 1,164 licenced premises in soho of which ~10% are late night ones (ie 2am - 6am), so you shouldn’t have any probem finding somewhere to slake your thirst Andrew . . tho there’s alway magaluf, but the licence density is 25% of soho’s :)
Their statement helps a bit with that. It says (point 7) that in 2025 it "considered 140 Soho-related licensing applications and submitted representations on 45" and it argues that this shows they practise "selective scrutiny, not automatic opposition".
I think they tend not to do themselves any favours in their approach (or maybe lack thereof) to engaging with media, but I am an annoyingly pro-YIMBY, pro-nightlife Soho resident and even I have to acknowledge lots of their complaints are broadly correct. Soho is not unique in the lack of infrastructure it has to deal with nightlife, but it is probably unique in the density of that nightlife, so the problems residents face are massively magnified. There is an unemptied temporary urinal that leaks rivers of piss across the street, placed near my front door every weekend - I think my experience of busy Soho weekends as a resident would be improved tenfold immediately if the council just semi regularly emptied the urinal while it was up. As it is the council is just proposing adding another urinal to the street to cope with increased footfall; residents across the area will all have similar stories of things that could easily be fixed with minimal work from the council, but that are largely just ignored and worsened by many of the councils decisions.
Let's let the Soho Society show us some licensing applications it hasn't refused.
there are 1,164 licenced premises in soho of which ~10% are late night ones (ie 2am - 6am), so you shouldn’t have any probem finding somewhere to slake your thirst Andrew . . tho there’s alway magaluf, but the licence density is 25% of soho’s :)
Contested, rather than refused
Their statement helps a bit with that. It says (point 7) that in 2025 it "considered 140 Soho-related licensing applications and submitted representations on 45" and it argues that this shows they practise "selective scrutiny, not automatic opposition".
its not argued, its their policy.
good to finally see some balance in the great soho resident pile-on. amidst all the word soup, some facts:
there are 194 licences per 1,000 residents, the highest density in europe.
there are ~15,000 annual visitors per soho resident.
soho has 121 late night licences, the highest in the uk.
words can be interpreted, numbers are immutable. hope that helps.