Oxford Street transformation – the state of play as 2026 gets underway

Nearly 18 months have passed since Sir Sadiq Khan announced a new plan for making major alterations to Oxford Street. On 17 September 2024, he revealed that the then brand new Labour government was backing his desire to bring “the nation’s high street” under his command.

This would not only entail putting Transport for London in charge of the highway itself, but also setting up a Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC) to annexe some of the area around it too. Control of that area would therefore be removed from Westminster City Council which, in May 2022, had become Labour-run for the first time in its history.

City Hall said that at the heart of the Mayor’s vision was the delivery of “proposals to pedestrianise the road”, an ambition that had been declared by a number of London politicians this century. Liberal Democrat Simon Hughes included the idea in his mayoral manifesto of 2004. Ken Livingstone, who won the election as Labour’s candidate that year, was less enthused: “To pedestrianise Oxford Street would be a disaster,” he said in September 2006.

Khan, though, has always been keen on the idea. In his 2016 manifesto, he promised to “work with Westminster Council, local businesses, Transport for London and taxis to pedestrianise Oxford Street”. He proposed “full pedestrianisation” and “a tree-lined avenue from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch”.

An early hope was that this would be delivered in tandem with the completion of Crossrail – what we now call the Elizabeth line – towards the end of 2018. But Crossrail was delayed and Conservative Westminster, which had worked productively with the Labour Mayor to that point, withdrew its support for the Oxford Street scheme shortly before the May 2018 borough elections – a sign of how residents’ groups with big reservations about pedestrianisation have long influenced Oxford Street policy.

The MDC approach nullifies the power of Westminster Council, whichever party holds its reins, to pull the plug. It has not thrilled Westminster’s current administration, which has long opposed pedestrianisation and had its own, painstakingly assembled, plans for improving Oxford Street effectively junked by the Mayor’s September 2024 intervention.

The direction of travel, though, was set. The MDC has been formed under the name of the Oxford Street Development Corporation (OSDC), a red line drawn round the land in its domain, and a board and chief executive appointed. What has been happening lately? And what will happen next?

BOARD POSITIONS

The first meeting of the OSDC board took place last week at City Hall. It wasn’t attended by board members alone. Mayor Khan himself was there. So was Richard Watts, his deputy chief of staff, who has been closely involved with the project. So was Phil Graham, the Greater London Authority’s “good growth” chief. And so was mayoral head of delivery, Jamilla Hinds-Brough.

There was a fitting sense of a baton being passed to board chair Scott Parsons and his colleagues. There was also a sense of messages being sent, both across the table and to audiences elsewhere.

After sharing fond memories of visiting Oxford Street and noting factors he said had led to its decline – the pandemic, the internet and the attractions of modern malls – the Mayor praised board member a fellow Labour politician Adam Hug for “doing a great job” as leader of Westminster. That was politic of him, as was, in its different way, Hug’s candid self-introductory observation that it was “a well-known public fact that we have a different vision for the delivery of transformation on Oxford Street” and that, “obviously, we would rather this body didn’t exist and we weren’t here”.

If that seems a bit stark, bear in mind that Westminster Labour will need to marshal all its resources to prevent a Conservative comeback come May, and the West End ward is a key marginal. Labour won all three seats there in 2022, but two of them have since turned blue – one through a defection and the other because of a by-election that saw the return of experienced Tory councillor Tim Barnes.

Hug has positioned himself as the champion of residents’ interest on the board. He will sit alongside Manisha Patel, the council’s Oxford Street director and, I’m told pending the completion of eligibility formalities, its chief executive Stuart Love. Westminster is pleased to have negotiated its three-seat allocation. Richard Olszewski, the Labour leader of Camden, is on the board too. His borough, it should not be forgotten, contains a significant portion of the West End, and the OSDC’s boundary encompasses a chunk of it and will have impacts beyond it.  Concurring, Graham said the Oxford Street scheme, as well taking in Marble Arch (and the northern tip of Park Lane) “supports a wider vision for the West End”.

The board’s other members are:

• Howard Dawber, Khan’s Deputy Mayor for Business and Growth.
• Margaret Casely-Hayward, an illustrious lawyer and businesswoman from an illustrious family. Check her Wikipedia page.
• Artist and stage designer Es Devlin (it’s short for Esmeralda).
• Ex-Arsenal managing director and widely-experienced businessman Keith Edelman.
• Emir Feisal, a chartered accountant and specialist in transformational change (which should be handy).
• Beamed in for the meeting from India, Soho restaurateur Asma Khan.
• Caroline Rush, until recently chief executive of the British Fashion Council.
• Kate Willard, chair of Thames Estuary Growth Board and also, as she informed the meeting, a resident of Berwick Street.
• Also on the board but in a non-voting capacity is Dee Corsi, dynamic chief executive of the New West End Company business improvement district, which represents many of the area’s big retailers.

As well as making up with Hug, Mayor Khan spelled out just how massively important Oxford Street still is, for all the problems it has had of late. “Every year, the businesses on Oxford Street help generate more than £25 billion towards the national economy,” he said. “And if you look at the Business Rates that all the businesses in Westminster contribute to the national economy, it’s more than all the businesses in Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle, Nottingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield put together”.

Not just a project for London, then, but for the whole of the UK. “By transforming Oxford Street, we can contribute even more to the national coffers,” said the Mayor. And Watts, after paying his own tribute to Hug and complimenting Olszewski too, stressed that the MDC initiative needed to be seen “in a global context”.

SOME CHALLENGES

Also at the meeting was Nabeel Khan, just announced as the MDC’s incoming chief executive, who told the meeting:

“I come into this role having spent a career delivering large-scale, place-based regeneration in politically complex parts of London. My key takeaway from working on all those schemes is it’s not just about the public realm, it’s not just about the regeneration, it’s not even just about the economic transformation of areas, important as all of those factors are. It’s about stewardship, ultimately – how a place feels, how a place functions, how a place is curated, how it is activated, how it’s managed day-to-day all year round.”

He’s moving on from being corporate director, growth and environment at Lambeth Council, where, in that and other roles, he has worked for the past six years. Previously, he’d done seven-and-a-half at the GLA, so he knows his way around. What challenges lie ahead?

Among the trickier tasks will be getting the transport changes right. A TfL consultation on those will close on Friday, so if you want to contribute, don’t hang about. At this stage, the OSDC, which is expected to have 40 or 50 people in its staff, is looking principally at the section of Oxford Street between Orchard Street, which runs down the west side of Selfridges, and Great Portland Street to the immediate east of Oxford Circus. It calls this Oxford Street West.

Bus services 7, 94, 98, 139 and 390 will be re-routed and bus stop positions changed. In its consultation, TfL says it thinks it pedestrianisation proposals “support the taxi and private hire industries” by providing new or enlarged ranks at some locations and simply by making Oxford Street more of a draw. The board meeting heard that the street’s footfall is currently at just 57 per cent of its level in 2006 (falls on Monopoly board neighbours Bond Street and Regent Street have been far smaller).

The consultation also confirms that the pedestrianised area would not be “compatible with people cycling or using scooters”. Olszewski said thought should be given to “how we can ensure that cyclists understand that pedestrianisation means ‘no bicycles’.” He added, agreeing with Kate Willard, that the space had to be fully inclusive, inviting and available to all.

Hug said some Westminster residents in the immediate vicinity of Oxford Street would have “deep concerns around displacement and the types of activation that will happen”, meaning principally, I think, buses and cabs trundling down their roads and rowdiness spilling into them. Further afield, “we are aware of concerns in Bayswater and Lancaster Gate” among older residents “who have relied on the bus routes, both to access Oxford Street and to go through on other journeys across London”. Hug also emphasised that the Oxford Street vision had to work for disabled people, those pushing baby buggies and so on.

Another area of concern could be the handling of north-south roads traversing this section of Oxford Street, such as Duke Street and the linked Davies Street and Stratford Place, which will – perhaps to the surprise of some – continue to carry traffic across Oxford Street post-pedestrianisation. A list of proposed tweaks to Westminster-controlled streets and junctions is set out in the consultation.

Then there is the day-to-day management of the pedestrianised section to consider. At the board meeting, Dee Corsi took up this theme, noting that Oxford Street is perceived by some to be too busy and not particularly safe. She said that if it is to offer world-class public realm that hosts large crowds and events, such concerns would have to be addressed to world-class standard too.

WHAT NEXT?

There is a timetable for the next few months. The public realm design principles are to be agreed by the end of this one, with design work on both the Oxford Street West section and the “whole-street vision” to start in February. “Enabling works” are scheduled to commence in March.

On 1 April, the MDC will become the planning authority within its boundary area, taking then from Westminster (nearly all) and Camden (a little bit). The design work for the Oxford Street West “transitional scheme” is reckoned to start in May. Subject to consultation, the highway will close to traffic over the summer and work on the transitional scheme will begin. They don’t intend to hang about.

Adam Hug underlined how much community engagement had gone in to Westminster’s scuppered plans and mentioned in passing that the council’s request for the board to include a local resident had not been granted (though he acknowledged that Kate Willard resides in Soho). He asked that the formal structures for resident engagement to be set up speedily. Parsons firmly agreed that “we’ve got to get out there and talk” and that the issue was “top of Nabeel’s list too”. Watts, surely mindful of that local amenity groups have already mobilised – they are, according to one local interested party, “firing off letters” – said it would be vital to hear not only from “the usual loudest voices”.

The board is to provide the members of a three-person planning committee, for which Emir Feisal volunteered. And there’s the question of money. The Mayor struck an upbeat note. “There is so much goodwill towards Oxford Street,” he said. “We’ve had interest from philanthropic contributors, potentially. We’ve had interest from people who want to advertise on Oxford Street, we’ve had interest from the private sector.” He thanked Corsi for her work on that front and added, “we’re going to be contributing towards this transformation as well”.

A positive start. A long way to go. But the Oxford Street transformation journey has begun.

Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Top image from TfL consultation page. Other images from OSDC board presentation. Watch the meeting here.

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