Oxford Street Development Corporation (OSDC) is seeking people to join a “community place shaping panel” to comment on how land development in the area will progress.
Approximately 20 panel members are being sought to comment on “new developments around Oxford Street, ensuring residents, workers and visitors have a voice in influencing planning power”.
OSDC became a local planning authority (LPA) from 10 August for the mayoral development area which includes streets south of Goodge Street in Fitzrovia as well as part of Marylebone, Mayfair, Soho and St Giles.
Planning applications in part of Bloomsbury, and Holborn and Covent Garden wards in London Borough of Camden, along with part of Hyde Park, Marylebone, and West End in City of Westminster will be decided by the new LPA.
The community panel would comment on plans for new built environment developments as well as the emerging main planning framework, known as the local plan, as it is takes shape over the next two or three years.
It is aimed at “residents, employers, employees, students or regular visitors to Oxford Street (recognising the extent of Oxford Street’s national reach) who are aged 16 years or older”, especially those “who do not already have a strong voice or position of influence in the area”, states the recruitment pack.
However, the panel will be chaired by an “independent community engagement professional”, and project management consultancy, Frame Projects, will be responsible for “writing reports summarising the panel feedback and scheduling the meetings”, as well as running the recruitment process.
Councillors, members of neighbourhood forums and amenity societies that are already statutory consultees in the planning process, Oxford Street Development Corporation employees and built environment professionals are not eligible to be panel members.
Participants would attend monthly, two-hour meetings on a Wednesday evening at Nineteen Wells Street in Fitzrovia.
The announcement follows on from the establishment in June of a Planning Quality Review Panel, made up of 23 built environment professionals, and additional members of the planning committee.
The creation of the OSDC has been highly controversial and unpopular with residents living around Oxford Street who will bear the brunt of the motor traffic displacement when pedestrianisation is introduced between Great Portland Street and Orchard Street later this year.
All buses and taxis serving Oxford Street, as well as cyclists, will be diverted through the already busy surrounding streets when the traffic-free section is implemented.
OSDC is unusual as mayoral development corporations are normally created to redevelop large brownfield sites — such as the Olympic Park in East London — rather than already fully developed and thriving commercial and residential areas.
Westminster Council — under both the current Conservative and previous Labour administrations — strongly opposed the creation of the OSDC while neighbouring Labour-controlled Camden welcomed it.
Any community-focused place shaping panel will have a limited role as the main driving force of the OSDC is the Mayor Sadiq Khan, the board members he has appointed, and the decisions already taken.
“There may be opportunities to comment on the pedestrianisation plans for Oxford Street but this is not the main focus of the panel,” states the recruitment pack.
The deadline for applications for the community panel is 13 September, with those shortlisted expected to attend an in-person workshop session on 28 September or 8 October 2026.
OSDC Community Place Shaping Panel recruitment.
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