Mark Wallinger

A TURNER Prize winner says he is being “driven out” of Soho as he slammed council chiefs for letting too many bars open.

Mark Wallinger said he had been “through a living hell of noise” as he spoke against a bar’s application to take over a neighbouring café in Bateman Street at a planning meeting on Tuesday.

The artist – who won the coveted prize in 2007 for his depiction of Brian Haw’s seminal anti-Iraq protest outside parliament – said: “Westminster decisions are forcing us out of the area we love. I am not the only one sleep-deprived and depressed. I am an artist and I have been driven out of Soho by these decisions. Is drinking the only economy in town? Surely we deserve better.”

He added: “I have lived in the area for 13 years and it has gone rapidly downhill. People who have lived here for decades are angry.”

He called for a better attempt to get arts and culture into venues in the West End, adding: “Do you want to rubber-stamp this, what may be the final straw?”

Simmons Bars, which is making a retrospective planning application after moving into a neighbouring café last year, argued that the bigger venue can bring “numerous benefits” to Soho.

But describing recent months in Bateman Street, Mr Wallinger said: “The noise doesn’t cease with last orders. We can’t open our windows. I would like to think at this meeting we could put a check on all this, and ask some questions about whether this is what we want from our neighbourhood, rather than cheap drinks, five-hour happy hours, and no bars with sound insulation. Must we endure noise, violence and drug dealing, defecating and vomiting on the street?”

Mr Wallinger, who has an exhibition about to open in Old Compton Street, said that “creativity has been central to Soho life for hundreds of years”, adding: “We went through a living hell of noise and disturbance. I find this whole meeting rather fatuous. There should be a legal sanction, not this sort of meeting.”

Simmons’s planning application for the change of use of the café would have added 30 tables to its current approved operation. Westminster City Council officers said they viewed the proposed use as “acceptable”.

But Tim Lord, chair of Soho Society, said: “When I moved here in 1991 noise was rarely an issue. Over time there has been a shift to more licensed premises, later hours, and more outdoor drinking, and serious reduction in residential amenity.”

He said a recent survey of the society’s members had found 46 per cent were considering moving out of Soho because the “area is already failing to cope with alcohol use”.

Speaking in support of the application, Simmons’s Kelsey Brennan said: “Simmons has 25 units across London. We provide proper social hubs for local communities.

“We create additional employment opportunities. Planning officers approached us and invited us to make an application. There are consequently numerous benefits. It will bring benefits to the vitality of the local area. It will bring an increase in business activity, a retention of existing employment and new positions, increased consumer choice and increased surveillance of the local area, resulting in reduced crime incidents.”

West End ward councillor Jessica Toale had backed objectors saying it “reduces diversity as it turns what was a café into a bar”.

Talking about retrospective planning applications, committee chair, Cllr Ruth Bush, said: “We have to deal with this application as if it had been put in on time.

“The government does propose to make this something where there will be penalties in the future. But this is not in place now. We are stuck with what we have got.”