On Tuesday, the Deputy Mayor of London announced that Sadiq Khan would be taking over Oxford Street early, with Transport for London designated as the traffic authority for the street. It was clear by the nature of the announcement that Westminster City Council were not prepared for this. Once again, the Mayor had jumped the gun without any consultation with the local council.
We spoke with Conservative Leader Cllr Paul Swaddle.
This incompetence and chaos has exposed the fact that the Labour Mayor and Labour Council are barely on speaking terms. What’s worse is that under party political pressure, the council has bowed to Sadiq’s demands without so much as a whimper and has given up on supporting the overwhelming majority of local residents who oppose the Mayor’s pedestrianisation plan.
At Full Council on Wednesday evening, I presented a petition signed by over 500 local people who are demanding that the Mayor keeps his hands off Oxford Street.
But the Mayor is ploughing on. His plans for Oxford Street are no more than a vanity project, designed to detract from his weak handling of the unions in endless strikes, his appalling record on crime, and his abysmal track record on housebuilding in London. He is now advertising for a £ 200,000-a-year job to oversee the project in his desperation to find some way of fixing the mess he has made.
Westminster Conservatives have pledged to fight the Mayor’s takeover of Oxford Street, which is based on a poorly thought-out plan that will see traffic pushed onto small side roads that can’t handle these volumes, bringing misery to residents and damaging businesses across the West End.
We all know that Oxford Street needs to be improved. Both the last Conservative administration in Westminster and the current Labour one had put forward £100m redevelopment plans that were fully costed and avoided the damaging impact of the Mayor’s proposals. Local residents and businesses supported these. Our campaign to listen to local people and to get a better plan for the area has been widely covered by the media this week, from the Standard to BBC News.The Mayor has shown he doesn’t want to listen to the local people who know the area best. The Conservatives are the only voice standing up for them.
If you would like to join us, please sign up here to be part of our campaign to keep the Mayor’s hands off Oxford Street.
