New-look idea that was due by Christmas 2018

THE full pedestrianisation of Oxford Street was fully supported by the city council until the ruling Tories of the day realised the flagship scheme was politically toxic and yanked the escape cord, with a few weeks to go before the 2018 local elections.

Labour London mayor Sadiq Khan and then Conservative deputy council leader Robert Davis united behind the Better Oxford Street project in November 2017 in a walkabout photocall, pledging in “bold plans” to make the famous shopping street traffic-free by Christmas 2018.

But a raft of candidates for the council elections were fielded by the Campaign Against Pedestrianisation of Oxford Street single-issue party, with potentially devastating consequences for the Tories in what were at the time considered safe wards.

One the longest serving Conservative councillors Glenys Roberts, who represented West End ward for almost 20 years, turned her back on the Tories and urged her followers to support the independents, arguing her party had “lost its way at all levels”.

Weeks before the count, the outgoing cabinet councillor Danny Astaire told a full council meeting that officers had been told to stop working on design work with the Mayor of London and that the council now opposed the plan.

The council then began drawing up its own scheme to modernise the famous shopping district.

Then council leader Nickie Aiken defended her decision to call a halt to the pedestrianisation project after mayor Sadiq Khan blasted her for a “betrayal of millions of Londoners”.

He had said Oxford Street would be pedestrianised by Christmas 2018 in what was considered his legacy project.

The Living Streets campaigner Peter Hartley, an ex-councillor, campaigned in favour of the pedestrianisation, saying: “It is one of the most dangerous and polluted streets in the UK and citizens are regularly killed and seriously injured in the street.”

Campaigner Tom Kearney, who was put in a coma after being hit by a bus in Oxford Street in 2009, also backed the pedestrianisation and had argued it did not go far enough.

Transport for London has been forced to withdraw a report it boasted proved a majority supported its Oxford Street pedestrianisation.

Actor and broadcaster Griff Rhys Jones praised decades of work of “nimbys” in stopping pollution ravaging neighbourhood streets in a scathing attack on Oxford Street pedestrianisation. The “Python” legend warned the mayor wanted to “move the noxious poison away from Oxford Street and out into the back streets”, and said: “Walk along Oxford Street and count the number of heavy diesel engines pumping their particulate matter into the immediate atmosphere. Buses and taxis stopping and starting, idling and accelerating, empty or not, they chug, fume and sputter ceaselessly. Delivery lorries throb out their fumes endlessly. Mr Mayor and his TfL team rightly want to dispose of this evil and save the temporary inconvenience to shoppers.”

Stay tuned for Round 2.