Recent media coverage has portrayed The Soho Society, a 56-year-old community organisation recognised by Westminster Council as an amenity society, as a threat to the Soho area’s hospitality sector and as a collection of miserable nimbys, determined to spoil other people’s fun.
In response to these depictions, the society has produced an 11-point statement, in which it challenges some claims made about it, sets out its objectives, explains how it goes about its work and points out that it has “no power to grant, refuse or review licences”, only to make representations – along with individuals and many other organisations – based on a licensing framework that is set by the council.
The statement begins with a declaration that Soho’s “hospitality, entertainment and cultural life are central to its identity” and that the society is “not opposed to hospitality or the night-time economy,” while stressing that “Soho is a mixed neighbourhood, not simply a late-night entertainment district”.
It argues that the area’s cultural and economic life also comprises “independent shops, non-hospitality businesses, schools, churches, theatres, music venues, workers, visitors, families and residents” and that its concern is the impact of what it calls an “unmanaged cumulative impact of a high concentration of licensed premises in a small area” on Soho’s broader ecosystem, citing recent growth to “over 500 licensed premises” in Soho.
The implications in terms of “crime, anti-social behaviour, public safety, public nuisance and the day-to-day functioning of the area,” are stressed, along with the “practical consequences” of a recent increase in late-night activity creating a need for “adequate public toilets, cleansing, waste management, policing, dispersal arrangements, public safety and street management”.
The statement also appears to contest claims made in The Guardian followed by The Standard and the BBC that the society voted in May to “challenge” all new applications for bars and restaurants in the area and efforts to renew existing ones, saying it “does not operate a blanket ‘no’ to hospitality” and adding that “in many cases” its representations to the council’s licensing committee “are not objections to the principle of a licence, but requests for enforceable conditions to manage impact”, such as noise and public safety.
Negative coverage of The Soho Society and its scrutiny work has formed part of heightened interest in Soho and the West End more generally due to Sir Sadiq Khan’s plans to have all motor traffic removed from a section of Oxford Street by the end of the summer as the start of a larger transformation of the Oxford Street area, and impending new powers to be given to the Mayor to make his own representations to London local authorities about licensing decisions and, later, to “call in” some deemed to be of “strategic” importance to the capital as a whole.
Khan recently wrote on X/Twitter that “complaining about nightlife when you *checks notes* choose to live in Soho is like living in South Kensington and complaining about museums”.
Around 2,000 people live in Soho today, compared with some 30,000 at the end of World War 2. About a third of them are social housing tenants. In 1976, The Soho Society established the Soho Housing Association to provide affordable dwellings for local people. A growing number of residential properties are being turned over to short-term lets, leading to complaints about rowdiness and crime.
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