A row between Westminster City Council and the Mayor of London over the borough's new licensing plan has run for more than a week, with Cllr Tim Barnes, Westminster's Deputy Leader, saying "the media has been used in order to advance a political agenda" rather than address the real issues at stake, according to the BBC. The dispute centres on plan wording about discouraging high volume vertical drinking, which some outlets characterised as a ban on standing to drink, and on Soho's status as a Cumulative Impact Zone, where new licence applications face a presumption of refusal.
Westminster's plan is the first in London to be scrutinised by City Hall under new devolution powers, meaning the outcome could set a precedent as every other borough prepares to publish similar plans in the years ahead, a dispute that coincided with the Mayor's Oxford Street Development Corporation formally taking control of planning for a pedestrianisation scheme Westminster has long opposed.
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Westminster's deputy leader, Conservative councillor Tim Barnes explains,
"I think it's fair to say that the media has been used in order to advance a political agenda rather than to necessarily inform people about what the real questions are in this debate.
"There aren't any real truths to the idea that we want to stop vertical drinking inside or outside pubs or that we want to curtail activity after 10 pm.
"What both of those policies were about was trying to find ways to offer hope, offer opportunity and new avenues for new venues in an area which already has the highest concentration of venues anywhere in central London."
Read the BBC coverage by Karl Mercer in full on their website.
