Westminster City Council and the New West End Company (NWEC), a business partnership of 600 UK & international retailers, restaurateurs, hoteliers, galleries and property owners in London's West End, have signed off on the first stage of a Memorandum of Understanding which will see a total £90 million allocated towards revamping Oxford Street.

Westminster City Council will fund £45 million of the total funds for redevelopment with the remaining to come from NWEC.

The council announced on Tuesday that it had approved £7.7 million for the first phase of design work.

The council said the plans, which will be set in motion in 2024, cover the entire 1.8-kilometre length of Oxford Street from Marble Arch to Tottenham Court Road, with key features including improved footways, greening and seating.

Junctions joining the street, including at Oxford Circus, will also be redesigned to create more space for pedestrians and the council will install 12 new controlled pedestrian crossings as well as improving 45 existing crossing points, it said.

Construction work is expected to commence in Autumn 2024 with Ikea and HMV having recently announced plans to open new outlets on the famous shopping street in the coming year.

“After years of abandoned schemes, we are now about to finally get under way with a deliverable plan to breathe new life into Oxford Street,” said Geoff Barraclough, Westminster City Council’s cabinet member for planning and economic development. “With the support of our partners at NWEC, we now have a coalition of the council, retailers, landowners, and others in place to develop a practical but also ambitious plan.”

Research from 2022 showed that Oxford Street footfall remained 52 per cent lower than pre-pandemic levels, with the revamp likely to weed out the deluge of American candy shops which have overtaken the famous shopping site in recently years.

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