Some 560 premises gained pavement licences to benefit from outdoor dining

• YOU report the al fresco dining scheme, introduced temporarily to help businesses during the pandemic, could become permanent, (Permanent road closures could mean al fresco boost for businesses, February 26).

And a message from Westminster Council that designs would be consulted on and considered “when the city recovers” from the pandemic.

Further to this was a message from city council leader Rachael Robathan that “the majority of our residents have supported these schemes in the past and we hope they will understand the need to continue the temporary measures until the end of September”.

Let’s leave aside all the businesses, trades and crafts that have been driven out of Soho long before the pandemic by Westminster’s exorbitant overheads, this touching concern for the hospitality sector was thought a good idea by residents, until the way it was implemented (without prior consultation with us) was seen and experienced.

The one business that had continued unabated throughout the lockdown, and continues to this day, was development; which necessitated HGVs, low-loaders and the like, squeezing through Soho’s narrow streets.

And now the streets were made even narrower by crash barriers that accommodated café customers in the roadway.

If a pavement you used was taken over by scaffolding or other work (and some cafés also annexed pavements), you simply had to walk in the path of the traffic – a scaffolder shouted at me to cross the road and use the opposite pavement, but neither I nor anyone else could do so, because it was barred by crash barriers.

And since none of those barriers has been removed, and are coming up to their first birthday, it was always obvious the scheme would continue this year, if not longer.

More worrying is the work that was done months ago, to turn a stretch of Old Compton Street into something resembling Checkpoint Charlie in a divided Berlin.

There is nothing temporary about the metal humps in the road and the strange bridgework-like structures on either side of them.

Presumably this is to create a permanent outdoor drinking and dining area, and it’s far from a design that “will be drawn up and consulted on”. It’s already there.

Is there any point in reminding the council of the constant warnings we are receiving from scientists that care will be needed as we continue to live with Covid-19 and its variants, or of the thousands who clustered in and around Old Compton Street last summer?

And on another, and very sad, note the Admiral Duncan pub, which is in the walled-off stretch, suffered a deadly nail-bomb attack in 1999.

Yes that’s a long time ago but many of us will never forget it, and if such an atrocity were to happen again how would emergency vehicles reach the scene at high speed?

Since it is all too apparent the council are intent on this plan, whether or not they have taken necessary precautions into account, I would simply ask that they should not insult our intelligence by giving the impression they have yet to consider it. The decision has clearly been made.

ALIDA BAXTER,
Broadwick Street, W1