Al fresco dining in Soho [Ben Walton_CC2.0] 

• ANY attempt to understand the impact of the al fresco scheme on Soho residents cannot be rightly judged if it continues to exclude the impact of the development and construction which continued and still continues alongside it.

The Covid-19 pandemic was likened to a wartime situation, but during World War II it was the Windmill Theatre which proudly boasted “We never closed”.

This time all the theatres were forced to shut, and remain shut long after the al fresco scheme began; but in the meantime construction workers, seemingly with the motto “who needs a mask if you’ve got a hard hat”, swarmed all over scaffolding and each other.

Yes, the open air was safer, but what about the social distancing everyone was advised to observe?

Super Saturday in July 2020 was rightly condemned as extremely dangerous – there’d yet to be vaccinations – but every day the danger of the coronavirus was ignored on building sites; as was the racket Soho residents had to suffer.

Noise of construction might end, but the moment it did the noise of screaming, celebrating drunks took over, and continued late into the night.

Since then construction sites have increased vastly in number, often barring the pavements to pedestrians. And succeeding them aren’t just the diners and drinkers.

I live in a block of flats with four other blocks close around me, and we are treated to bands with amplifiers whose volume is so high you can’t have a phone conversation.

After a day of building work, how would anyone on Westminster City Council like a mariachi band to set up outside their door? The city council, it appears to me, has turned its back on residents everywhere.

Six million pounds thrown away on the Marble Arch “mound” where, as anyone who tried it observed, you merely got a sight of the surrounding scaffolding.

The whole of the West End turned into a building site, and this is supposed to improve our air quality?

The council wants a café culture, but it wants a construction boom too, and if the combination creates an impossible situation for residents? Great, they’ll move out so there’ll be nobody to vote against this appalling situation.

As if the pandemic hadn’t been depressing enough, what is happening in Soho now depresses me more.

ALIDA BAXTER
Dufours Place, W1