This article originally appeared in The Fitzrovia News on 23 March. You can read in full here.

For better or worse, the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street is set to be one of Sir Sadiq Khan’s lasting legacies in City Hall.

The Mayor of London gave final approval to Transport for London (TfL) in February to remove traffic between Great Portland Street and Orchard Street in a bid to make the road a “global leader for shopping, leisure and outdoor events”, and to divert buses, taxis and pedal cycles through Marylebone and part of Fitzrovia.

However, opponents of the plans have continued to scrutinise the details of implementing the scheme in the coming months and years.

On Thursday 19 March the London Assembly Budget and Performance Committee grilled officials from the Oxford Street Development Corporation (OSDC), TfL and the Greater London Authority (GLA) in what was one of the final chances to question City Hall on the issue before the pre-election period kicks in. Here’s what we learned:

Assembly Members question whether local voices matter                   

Around 2,700 people responded to the second consultation on the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street. This included 1,800 individuals, 83 stakeholders including residents’ associations, and two campaigns.

Helen Cansick, Head of Investment Planning for Healthy Streets at TfL, said the network carried out deep analysis on the 14,000 individual comments received to create “very extensive” results which City Hall could use.

However, she confirmed that no analysis was carried out at postcode level, meaning there had not been specific, separate probes into how those who live locally feel.

Susan Hall, the City Hall Conservatives group leader, said: “We’re hearing loud and clear from residents that they’re very unhappy about this. So why can’t we have proper published details about the consultation — why can’t we know the postcodes of the people that have, or the number of people, and the problems coming from specific areas.

“Having granular detail of people within a half a mile radius would give us some indication of just how unhappy local people are.”

Cansick said: “Analysing right down to postcode level does risk confidentiality, particularly if you’ve only got one or two responses from a particular postcode.

“We have to protect people’s identity and their individual right to respond confidentially. Our priority is to understand the collective view of what people feel about our proposals and that’s the approach we take in every consultation that we undertake.

“We do and we have good representation and excellent engagement with the residents’ association.

“Like every scheme that TfL delivers, Oxford Street is serving a very wide community of people beyond the local residents, so it’s important that we consider all of those views, people who are working there, people who are visiting, as well as people who are living there. But I feel, as I said, if you look at the map in the consultation report, I feel that we’ve got a really strong representation and understanding of those local residents because they have responded proactively to the consultation.”

Hall told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “It’s easy for people outside of Oxford Street to think pedestrianisation is a really good idea. But locals know there are genuine logistical and safety challenges posed by this plan.

“Residents want to know where are the bus routes going to go, what are the plans to ensure disabled residents can maintain access to local stores, what mitigations are in place to tackle rough sleeping and maintain safety on the street at night?

“But Sadiq Khan isn’t concerned about this, instead he’s pushing ahead as fast as he can to secure his legacy project. Local residents’ views on the challenges the plan poses are just an obstacle in the Mayor’s way. We want to see plans for Oxford Street which consider the concerns of real local people who know the risks and challenges best.”

No commercial sponsor has been found

In January, a spokesperson for the Mayor of London said he was confident that the OSDC would be able to build enough commercial partnerships to cover “most of its budget”, in addition to GLA funding, in the coming years.

Adam Barret, chief finance officer at the OSDC, said the corporation was hoping to install advertising that could bring in up to £25mn a year but warned that they will need to hold emergency talks with the Mayor if commercial income is not enough to fund the scheme.

This could result in having to scale down the transformation of Oxford Street.

“There are elements in the capital spend where there’s scope to scale up or down in terms of the urban design of Oxford Street,” Barret said.

Khan defended the OSDC’s record, saying that they were only incorporated at the start of the year and that they were “still quite an infant organisation”.

“I’m confident for the next three years we’ve got the base budget there to allow us to forward fund and be the cornerstone investor in attracting sponsorship and attracting private investment as we work out our commercialisation strategy,” he said.

But Neil Garratt, the Tory Assembly Member who chairs the committee, questioned why no substantive work appeared to have been done since plans to pedestrianise Oxford Street were first announced in September 2024.

Khan said that “investors want clarity” and that the Mayoral Development Corporation being in place means that talks can only now “start in earnest”.

The trial phase could last up till 2028

Despite the Mayor’s final approval for the scheme, the OSDC confirmed that any changes to Oxford Street may not be made permanent for up to two years.

Nabeel Khan, chief executive officer of the OSDC, said the time will be used to “test” what works and “make sure that some of the assumptions we make during the design phase actually play out in practice”.

Anything that doesn’t work will then be “tweaked” as appropriate, he added, before the permanent scheme is put in place.

Pushed on an exact timeframe, he said: “We’re keeping it flexible at this moment in time. But once the final designs are confirmed, we’ll be very clear about the exact time scale.”

This article originally appeared in The Fitzrovia News on 23 March. You can read in full here.