Westminster Labour have stepped up their pressure on Transport for London as part of the community campaign to stop TFL from considering Royal Oak as a replacement for Victoria coach station.

Westminster Labour Group Leader Councillor Adam Hug and Bayswater Councillor Maggie Carman have delivered the first tranche of the Labour petition against the coach station to London City Hall. To add your support to the petition please sign here.

Karen Buck MP, Cllr Hug and Cllr Carman have also written to London Mayor Sadiq Khan to call on him to intervene to stop any potential plans for a Royal Oak Coach station. Their letter says:

Dear Sadiq,

We are writing, following previous discussions with Heidi Alexander and your team, to restate our opposition to potential plans for a coach station at Royal Oak and to ask for an urgent update on TFL’s thinking.

As we have previously set out in previous correspondence, Royal Oak is a wildly unsuitable site to deal with the volume of traffic and people that a coach station would bring to a quiet residential area, fundamentally altering and damaging the nature of the local community. The area lacks anything like the level of bus connectivity that would be required to safely and swiftly move coach passengers to their destinations. It would also dramatically increase the already significant air quality problems, particularly around the area of the proposed coach station under the Westway and on approach roads throughout Bayswater, along Harrow Road and Marylebone Road. As has been set out in previous correspondence and discussion, there are a number of other insurmountable practical challenges that clearly make Royal Oak an unsuitable choice.

Thousands of local residents have signed petitions against the proposed coach station and the campaign against it has brought together people from all walks of life and political persuasion to say with one voice-please do not build a coach station at Royal Oak.

Can you please provide us with an urgent update about TFL’s current plans?  It is our profound hope that TFL listen to the concerns of local residents and rule out Royal Oak as a potential coach station site.

Yours sincerely,

Karen Buck MP (Westminster North), Cllr Adam Hug (Leader of the Labour Group- Westminster Council), Cllr Maggie Carman (Bayswater Labour Councillor- Westminster Council)