‘The council’s claim that the original process failed to consider sufficient options does not hold water’ says John Gregson

A PLAN to pedestrianise a street in Little Venice has been put on hold with the council citing concerns about costs.

John Gregson, a resident who petitioned two years ago to get cars removed from Formosa Street, said he is “concerned and disappointed” by the update, saying the scheme had widespread support and would benefit the wider area.

He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “The results of my petition and the initial consultation confirm there is strong local support for a full pedestrianisation scheme in Formosa Street that would create an attractive community asset: a ‘village square’, free from traffic at all times, where residents and visitors could meet, shop, enjoy the restaurants and cafés, and simply spend time.”

He added: “The council’s claim that the original process failed to consider sufficient options does not hold water.”

The options that were included in the public consultation, he said, ranged “from ‘do nothing’ to ‘full pedestrianisation’, and there was an overwhelming majority of responses in favour of the latter”.

Westminster Council’s cabinet member for city management Tim Mitchell said the authority understands residents are concerned about the project’s future, and that designs are being reviewed with the community to be consulted in due course.

The LDRS covered John Gregson’s 2024 petition in which he claimed support for pedestrianising Formosa Street came from not just residents but also businesses in the area.

Formosa Street

“What I’m trying to do is to create a space for the community to meet and just hang around in, to make it more of an asset to the community as a whole rather than just a bit of a rat-run for vehicles,” he said at the time.

The petition received 365 signatures and prompted a formal consultation to be launched by the then-Labour administration the following year.

In February 2026 the former cabinet member for streets, Cllr Max Sullivan, approved moving ahead with a feasibility design with the project added to the capital programme in April.

An initial budget of £900,000 was allocated, with detailed designs and implementation yet to be approved.

Following the May elections, when the council was retaken by the Conservatives, the scheme came under review, as did all major public realm projects funded by the local authority.

Mr Gregson said he had been chasing for updates on the plans for Formosa Street, and had now received correspondence from Cllr Mitchell informing him it had been paused.

In his email, seen by the LDRS, the cabinet member wrote that “not all of the options that could have been considered were put forward”. He also noted the expected cuts to the council’s government grants under the Fair Funding Review 2.0, to be around £100million.

“Therefore, because of the capital and revenue costs of the proposals, I have halted the scheme, as expenditure of circa £1million is simply not affordable at this time,” he wrote. “It makes a lot more sense to trial proposals in this location to see what might work without spending such large sums of money.

“As you will recall, there was a Covid-19 temporary scheme that was comparatively ‘light-touch’.”

He had asked the city council’s public realm team to use that as the basis for looking at revised proposals, “with a view to running a trial in summer 2027”.

In a statement he added: “We understand that residents are concerned about the future of the project. At the moment, we are reviewing design options with local councillors and will be consulting members of the community around Formosa Street in due course.”