Artist’s ‘birds’ eye view’ of Oxford Circus, traffic on Regent Street, and two piazzas on Oxford Street, either end of the circus

• JUST once I would like to see Westminster City Council consult… anybody before taking a radical step.

And the latest step to be taken without consultation will be the piazzas planned for Oxford Circus, (Battle lines drawn over Oxford Circus piazzas, June 18).

No wonder the city council is scurrying to get this under way before the next elections, because you only have to live in Soho to dread the results of such a move (or lack of it, given the jams that will result).

Walk along Broadwick Street on almost any weekday morning, and you will find it choked (the correct word) with heavy goods vehicles serving the various developments. Or huge vans.

Anybody care about our air quality? Not the city council, clearly. And now it appears things are going to get worse for everybody.

In recent years Soho has seen low-loaders and enormous containers constantly trying to negotiate streets far too narrow to cope with them.

If Fitzrovia and Mayfair are to join us, and find jammed lines of buses outside their windows, is this supposed to be an improvement?

May I point out the huge numbers of people who need taxis and buses, not because they are lazy but because they cannot walk far without them, or cannot use the Underground, or have babies in buggies to cope with.

And has the city council also failed to consult the emergency services? Last week a fire engine, its siren screaming, raced along Oxford Street.

I’ve seen police cars and ambulances doing the same thing. Are they, too, supposed to crawl around side streets?

When Boris Johnson was Mayor of London he closed 10 London fire stations – Belsize, Bow, Clerkenwell, Downham, Kingsland, Knightsbridge, Silvertown, Southwark Woolwich, and Westminster – and removed 27 fire engines, without consultation and despite innumerable protests and warnings by fire crews.

Firefighters were reduced to weeping as they saw their stations closed. Many more tears have been shed by others since.

Radical actions taken without consultation can be dangerous. They are insulting to those who will be most affected, and to create piazzas at such a crucial and busy traffic junction in the heart of the West End is impractical in the extreme.

ALIDA BAXTER, W1