Sir Sadiq Khan to pedestrianise Oxford Street ‘as quickly as possible'
Plans to ban traffic from part of Oxford Street will be implemented 'as quickly as possible' as they are supported by 'the vast majority of Londoners', mayor Sir Sadiq Khan said.
Two-thirds (66%) of respondents to a consultation support the pedestrianisation plan, Sir Sadiq's office said.
A separate YouGov survey conducted in September 2024 indicated 63% of Londoners are in favour of the project.
Oxford Street is one of the world's busiest shopping areas, with around half a million visitors each day.
Sir Sadiq Khan wants to ban vehicles from a 0.7-mile stretch between Oxford Circus and Marble Arch, with the potential for further changes towards Tottenham Court Road.
Detailed proposals for traffic will be consulted on later this year.
A previous attempt by Sir Sadiq to pedestrianise that part of Oxford Street was blocked by then-Conservative run Westminster City Council in 2018.
His latest proposals depend on him obtaining permission from Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner in her role as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to establish a new Mayoral Development Corporation, which would provide planning powers.
The aim is for this to be created by the start of next year.
Sir Sadiq said: 'Oxford Street has suffered over many years, so urgent action is needed to give our nation's high street a new lease of life.
'It's clear that the vast majority of Londoners and major businesses back our exciting plans, so I'm pleased to confirm that we will now be moving ahead as quickly as possible.
'We want to rejuvenate Oxford Street; establish it as a global leader for shopping, leisure and outdoor events with a world-class, accessible, pedestrianised avenue.
'This will help to attract more international visitors and act as a magnet for new investment and job creation, driving growth and economic prosperity for decades to come.'
Ms Rayner said: 'We want to see Oxford Street become the thriving place to be for tourists and Londoners alike, and that's why we welcome the Mayor of London's bold proposals to achieve that.
'We will support the mayor in delivering this ambitious vision, which will help to breathe new life into Oxford Street – driving investment, creating new jobs for local people and providing a boost to economic growth in the capital.'
Adam Hug, leader of Labour-controlled Westminster City Council, said: 'While the mayor's formal decision today was not the City Council's preferred outcome, it is far from unexpected, and it is now important for Oxford Street's future to move forward together.
'Since the mayor's new approach was made public last autumn, Westminster has worked pragmatically and productively with the Greater London Authority (GLA) to ensure that the plan for Oxford Street more closely meets the needs of businesses, visitors, and residents.
'Since 2022, Oxford Street has roared back to life after the pandemic. Such is the level of retail confidence that existing brands have spent £118 million refitting their stores in the last 12 months alone, according to Savills.
'Westminster City Council will work constructively with the mayor's team to ensure the nation's high street is re-imagined in a way that works for visitors, shoppers, and our residents.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scottish Sun
31 minutes ago
- Scottish Sun
Family-run business holding ‘everything must go' sale as Labour's tax hikes force the closure of its last shop
Has a retailer near you closed down? We'd love to hear from you please email: money@ BYE BYE Family-run business holding 'everything must go' sale as Labour's tax hikes force the closure of its last shop Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) A FAMILY-run retail business is closing its last store in a few days, offering great bargains before it shuts. The Cotswolds Sewing Centres, a family-run business, is closing its last store in Witney next week, offering big discounts in a "everything must go" sale. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 1 The Witney store will close for the final time on Tuesday, June 24 Credit: Witney Sewing and Knitting Centre The business, which has been a local favourite since 2021, says rising taxes under the Labour government have made it impossible to continue. This closure follows the shutdown of its sister store in Banbury earlier this year, ending over 40 years of serving the high street. Amy Brennan, who took over the business after her mother passed away in 2020, previously stated that the Witney shop and online store would stay open after closing the Banbury branch. However, she has now announced that both will be closing as well. In a notice sent to customers she said: "With a heavy heart I'm announcing the closing of Cotswold Sewing Centres. "Our Witney store and website will close in June 2025. "Unfortunately the April increases for businesses has forced this decision. "Thank you for all the support over the years." The Witney store will close for the final time on Tuesday, June 24. Until then, shoppers can grab bargains both in-store and online as the owners work to clear out their remaining stock. Britain's retail apocalypse: why your favourite stores KEEP closing down According to recent posts on the retailer's Facebook page, shoppers can get 30% off all fabric, 20% off yarn and 10% off drops yarn. Items in the haberdashery are discounted by 10%, and knitting and crochet patterns are available for just £3. In response to the post shoppers have shared their sadness about the closure. One person said: "This is just awful. Witney High Street is dying because of the high rents and rates. "I will be very sorry to see this particular shop go, as a dressmaker it's been a life-saver on many occasions." Another said: "That's a crying shame! "Where do all of us who enjoy being creative with knitting or sewing go now?" A third shopper said: "I'm so sad to hear the news. "This shop has always been such a special place for me - not just for finding beautiful fabrics and materials, but for the calm and welcoming atmosphere." RETAIL PAIN IN 2025 The British Retail Consortium predicted that the Treasury's hike to employer NICs will cost the retail sector £2.3billion. Research by the British Chambers of Commerce showed that more than half of companies planned to raise prices by early April. A survey of more than 4,800 firms also found that 55% expect prices to increase in the next three months, up from 39% in a similar poll conducted in the latter half of 2024. Three-quarters of companies cited the cost of employing people as their primary financial pressure. The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has also warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year. It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28% increase on the previous year. Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the CRR said: "The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025." Professor Bamfield has also warned of a bleak outlook for 2025, predicting that as many as 202,000 jobs could be lost in the sector. "By increasing both the costs of running stores and the costs on each consumer's household it is highly likely that we will see retail job losses eclipse the height of the pandemic in 2020. Why is the retail sector struggling? The retail sector has struggled in recent years due to the onset of online shopping and lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic. Just this week, the owners of Poundland confirmed they would shut 68 stores in a major shake-up, with 82 more at risk. Both Hobbycraft and The Original Factory Shop are also shutting branches as part of restructuring efforts. Higher inflation since 2022 has also hit shoppers' budgets while businesses have struggled with higher wage, tax and energy costs. The Centre for Retail Research has described the sector as going through a "permacrisis" since the 2008 financial crash. Figures from the Centre also show 34 retail companies operating multiple stores stopped trading in 2024, leading to the closure of 7,537 shops.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
London's graffiti-riddled corpse is a warning of our apocalyptic future
One of the founders, Joe Reeves, 28, shared his rationale for trying to save London, wash cloth by wash cloth. 'I grew up in High Wycombe, which is a 25-minute train ride into Marylebone and then the Bakerloo line into Oxford Circus. The Bakerloo line was this symbol of 'I've arrived in the greatest city in the world.' I was going down the stairs and through this tunnel, and then I would appear somewhere in this amazing city surrounded by opportunity.' Flash forward to his experience now, which most people will find familiar. 'Every morning, I go to Lambeth North station to go to my office, and I see someone push past the barrier,' Reeves says. 'I tap in and follow them in, and then I share a lift with them down to the platform, this person that just stole from me and everybody else on the platform in front of me. They're playing music out loud on their phone. Everybody else is rolling their eyes, frustrated, but no one's doing anything, and the carriage is covered in graffiti.' Personally, I do not think that spray-paint on public (or private) property can ever be called art. But when vandalism is just hideous it's somehow easier to take than when it becomes murderously political, which is the turn it's taken since, you guessed it, October 7 2023. With the license to treat London like a toilet or a rubbish bin firmly in place, courtesy of Sadiq Khan's bizarrely anti-improvement mayoralty, it wasn't going to be a big leap to target 'Zionists', directly or indirectly, on as many public surfaces as possible, constantly. It's a perfect storm. In neighbourhoods like mine, a strong presence of illegal migrants doing their thing below the radar (some of it decent hard work, some of it not), hostels for new arrivals and asylum seekers, and lots of unemployed youths who have given the two fingers to education are all part of the meteorology of the moment. Once home to refugees from Nazi Austria, Germany, Hungary and Poland, my area of London became famous for its Mitteleuropean café culture in the mid-to-late 20th century. People who frequented these cafés in the 1950s and 1960s remember hearing strongly accented old people talking about psychoanalysis where vape shops and grungy middle-eastern supermarkets now sit. 'The bus conductor would call out 'Jerusalem' or 'Vienna'! The German accent in the streets was predominantly Austrian,' recalled Walter Gratzer, a refugee who became a distinguished chemist upon release from an internment camp on the Isle of Man at the start of the war. Now the same road is stalked by feral youths, people who speak no English at all, and has become a throbbing centre of virulent anti-Israel, sometimes Hamas-glorifying, noise-making. We hear it, we feel it, and we see it everywhere in bright ugly letters. That it has become an epicentre of such stuff is not a surprise: it is now home to a large community of people from backgrounds that make them more likely to give voice or be sympathetic to anti-Zionist outpourings. Over the past few years, I have come to see cars, even on the quiet tree-lined roads parallel to my own, emblazoned with emblems of the Palestinian cause – one has a map of Israel done up in green, red and black and a few lines of Arabic translating to 'from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free' on its back window. It's not just unnecessary: it's aggressive. Other daily sights, albeit painted over quite quickly either by horrified locals or the council (I suspect the former) include scrawls (to take just a few recent examples) of 'Israel kills kids', 'F--k Israel', 'Gaza' and 'Free Palestine' and 'Zionists out' over street signs, security grilles and protective covers of shop fronts, and buildings. You can't not see this stuff every day, no matter the route you choose. As soon as one vile message is taken down, another pops up. It's not all bad. For all the scary louts, the nocturnal vandals with spray cans, the phone-thieving chancers, the shoplifters, the music-blaring ruffians, the weed-smoking trespassers, the fare-dodging criminals, and the Islamist sympathisers there are lots of kind, decent people of all ages, backgrounds, both men and women. Someone is always on hand to enthusiastically help with a heavy suitcase or a pram and generally people are considerate on public transport. It's just that the exceptions to this have become painfully frequent and give a feeling of a society coming unstuck, brewing nastiness and danger of a type not seen since in several generations. We have a double society. We have the ugly, dangerous descent into lawlessness, the trashing of our cities by people who feel entirely free to visit their anti-social, crassly political impulses on public property. But we also have the noticeable, reliable kindness of people. I now believe that each type of behaviour is simply a matter of personal inclination, since nobody has much to fear from order-enforcing authorities anymore, either from police or other people's judgment. As the guys from Looking For Growth have found, people keep to themselves and say nothing because they are frightened to intervene. We all feel that fright. I just hope that the good people don't lose the courage and the decency to go on being good, as the cities around them decay into crime and the personal studios of people who mean not just 'Zionists', but all of us, ill.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Reform is on course to WIN next General Election, new poll shows - as Nigel Farage's party takes nine-point lead over Labour
Reform UK is now on course to win the next General Election, a shock new poll shows - as they take a stunning nine-point lead over Labour. The voting intention for Nigel Farage 's party's was more than double that of the Tories, who languished in third with 15 per cent, compared to Labour's 25 per cent and Reform's 34 per cent. An Ipsos opinion poll highlighted the rocketing success of the party and rising contempt for Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves ' chaotic first year in power. Replicated in a General Election, the figures would give Reform an overwhelming 400 seats in the Commons - with a majority of 200, The Telegraph reports. Figures show that 54 per cent of Labour voters and 48 per cent of Tory voters have changed their support - with a high proportion of defectors from both going to Reform. Farage would become Prime Minister and there would be just 10 Conservative seats, while Labour would be reduced from 403 to 140. 'This poll shows Reform can and will win the next general election,' Farage told the broadsheet. Figures from the polling of 1,180 Brits show Labour's plunging popularity, after winning the 2024 General Election with the biggest majority since Tony Blair. But figures now show him to be the least popular prime minister at this stage of his time in office since records began. Just 19 per cent say they are satisified with the work he is doing - while 73 per cent are dissatisfied. In comparison, after the same amount of time Boris Johnson had an approval raiting of 48 per cent, Blair's was 68 per cent and John Major's was 54 per cent. The Conservatives' polling is also the worst since records began, with only 11 per cent of voters satisfied with Kemi Badenoch's work. Gideon Skinner, senior director of UK politics at Ipsos, told The Telegraph: 'Reform UK has continued to build on its success, helped by high levels of enthusiasm among its own support and among working-class voters in particular, and taking votes from both Labour and especially the Conservatives, who show little sign of recovery. 'The disappointment with Labour is clear, even among those who voted for the party in 2024.' It comes after the public swing of support tp Reform was dramatically shown in the local elections, scoring victory in a Runcorn by-election on the same night. In a night of jaw-dropping results, Reform UK claimed outright majorities in Staffordshire and Lincolnshire County Councils, toppling long-standing Conservative dominance.
