The plans to pedestrianize Oxford Street in London have pretty much been approved.
All it now requires is that the plans are rubberstamped for one of the country’s most known shopping thoroughfares to ban cars, at least between Great Portland Street and Orchard Street to include the area either side of Bond Street.
Two streets further on heading west and Hyde Park is reached.
In September 2025, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and the United Kingdom’s former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner — she is no longer in that post following a report concluding she had underpaid stamp duty on a purchase of a home — launched a proposal to transform London’s best known street, Oxford Street, into a pedestrian-only thoroughfare.
Some people thought it an excellent idea. Others, of course, did not.
I think it is a worthwhile plan. I do not think many consumers travel there by car to shop, and most of the stores on the street are large, High Street-branded businesses that can work out how to best get deliveries. Plus, they already require large shipments so these businesses have probably already worked out how to do so.
The street needs a new lease on life.
Back in the 1980s, it was awful. Yes, there was the Virgin Megastore on the corner, and maybe I was of the age then that the only thing that mattered on that street was Virgin’s record selection, but I seem to remember every other store was a pop-up (before that word was readily bandied about) auction store.
These were largely sad places where someone with a microphone wrapped around their head auctioned off things in brown boxes.
These stores were almost full, so I guess the idea was popular, but I had the impression then, even at a young age, that everyone was getting less than they paid for.
Then the street had a raft of sweet shops — and they had signs advertising “American candy” and such. The Financial Times in 2022 wrote an article on the situation titled “How Oxford Street was overrun by sweet shops,” which was picked up by American media company NBC, which wrote that one store there “is home to Candy World, one of more than two dozen shabby American-themed stores selling candy and trinkets whose recent mysterious explosion on one of London’s most popular shopping thoroughfares has confounded officials and property experts.”
The Metropolitan Police raided several stores, with Time Out writing in March 2023 that “over £1 million worth of illegal and counterfeit goods have now been seized from the nefarious American candy shops on Oxford street in the past 15 months.”
These goods included fake chocolate and sweets but also, I assume hidden from display, fake cigarettes and vapes.
Besides the obvious question as to who wants to come to the heart of London to buy American sweets, such activity and such a look to a High Street have, I imagine, a desultory knock-on effect to other, dare I say it, better businesses, including hotels.
There are not many hotels that have an Oxford Street address, but there are plenty in the very immediate area.
I believe the mayor’s plans — and the public is still able to make their opinions known via official channels — will benefit residents and hotel guests from just having a better experience in general.
That consumers can walk across from one side of the road to the other without worrying about traffic will lead to a better experience and potentially better shops and even more consumers.
According to Google Maps, the length of Oxford Street is 0.6 miles in length, or, the mapping software says, a 13-minute walk, maybe 30 if one is slowly window shopping.
A search on CoStar’s database shows hotels within a block or two of the proposed zone include the 269-room Claridge’s; 237-room Marriott London Hotel Grosvenor Square; 199-room The BoTree; 149-room Radisson Blu Hotel London Bond Street; 101-room The Beaumont and 50-room Mandarin Oriental Mayfair London, among others.
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