Soho, the projects without progress

Published: 9 April, 2010

• I AM intrigued by Councillor Jonathan Glanz’s response (Improvements to Soho are going forward, April 2) to my points about the public realm in Soho.
He refers to improvements in Rathbone Place (no residents on the electoral register), Kingly Street (seven on the register) and Argyll Street (none though there must be in the Argyll Arms) thus proving my point about this side of Soho since these are improvements in predominantly commercial areas.
The Carnaby Street area is well looked after by Shaftesbury plc and, as he says, developments by the Crown Estate and will enhance the streets around their sites.
What you might call “Soho proper” from Greek Street to Poland Street is not so well looked after.
Councillors who attended the recent scrutiny panel on Soho’s public realm all expressed great concern at the state of the area’s streets as did the Soho Society.
I have a copy of a 1985 document called
A Step Forward for Soho: A Linked Programme of Schemes, which included Berwick Street and much else as part of Westminster’s 400th anniversary, offering plaques to sponsors, and I have just obtained a 1987 document called The Streets of Soho listing a proper programme for 41 areas for improvement some of which some were implemented, for example, Meard and Broadwick streets.
This was a five-year programme with a budget of £4.5million and Berwick Street Market was approved with a budget, but never implemented, and that was more than 20 years ago!
There was another project around the same time called Market Streets Soho.
None of these have been seen by the current Soho Action Plan Group though they would (and do) provide a good starting point for a more thorough programme than the three streets he lists.
My points about investing large sums on Mount Street and St James’s Square and the loss of the £5million Soho Plan budget remained unanswered.
I will send on the above documents since the collective memory seems to be lacking, probably due to Westminster disbanding its excellent in-house Urban Design Group in about 1991.
DAVID BIEDA
Labour Candidate for West End ward