Why the pedestrianisation debate keeps dividing Britain

Posted on: 18 May, 2026

By Linda Serck

When West Berkshire Council announced it would end Newbury’s controversial evening pedestrianisation trial two months early after strong public opposition, it reignited a wider national debate about how British towns are designed, who they are designed for, and whether the future of the high street can really coexist with car-first planning. Two academics from the University of the Built Environment, speaking separately on BBC Radio Berkshire, argue that the conversation has become far bigger than traffic management alone.

For almost a year, Newbury’s town centre became a testing ground for one of the most emotionally charged questions in British urban planning: what happens when cars are removed from the heart of a town?

The trial extension introduced under an Experimental Traffic Regulation Order, lengthened Newbury’s pedestrianised hours from 10am-5pm to 10am-11pm across streets including Northbrook Street and Market Place. The aim was to encourage footfall, support hospitality businesses and create a cleaner, safer and more vibrant town centre environment.

Instead, the scheme triggered fierce debate. More than 3,000 people responded to the public consultation, with over three quarters opposing the trial in its current form, citing concerns ranging from accessibility and deliveries to congestion and reduced trade. West Berkshire Council has now decided to end the experiment in September 2026, two months earlier than planned, while broader town centre plans are reconsidered.

Britain’s uneasy relationship with urban change

 

Yet for academics at the University of the Built Environment, the Newbury backlash reveals something more profound than frustration over road closures. It exposes Britain’s uneasy relationship with urban change itself.

Speaking on BBC Radio Berkshire, Professor Lee Ivett, Head of the School of Architecture at the University, argued that many successful examples already exist elsewhere in Europe.

“It’s certainly done really, really well in Europe, especially northern Europe, a lot of the Scandinavian countries,” he said. “We recently took our students on a field trip to Belgium and visited Brussels, Ghent, and a lot of the urban centres of not just big cities, but actually also smaller towns benefit greatly from pedestrianisation.”

Lee also pointed to examples closer to home.

“My home city of Preston has recently pedestrianised elements of its city centre, which in the short term undoubtedly created quite a bit of disruption. But actually in the medium term, I think it’s really, really helped revitalise the experience of the city centre.”

Pedestrianisation disputes

That distinction between short-term upheaval and long-term transformation sits at the centre of many pedestrianisation disputes across the UK.

Oxford Street in London has been the subject of repeated pedestrianisation proposals for more than a decade. Birmingham’s city centre overhaul radically reduced vehicle dominance through the redevelopment of New Street and surrounding public spaces. Liverpool’s Paradise Street scheme, commonly known as Liverpool ONE, initially faced resistance before becoming embedded within the city’s retail identity.

Meanwhile, other projects across Britain have struggled where transport alternatives remained weak or town centre strategies felt fragmented. For example, during the pandemic, several low-traffic neighbourhood (LTN) schemes in areas including Ealing, Oxford and parts of Birmingham faced backlash from residents and businesses who argued that congestion had simply been pushed onto surrounding roads rather than reduced overall. Ealing Council eventually removed seven of its nine LTNs after concluding some had produced little measurable improvement in air quality while increasing pressure on neighbouring streets.

Car-led urban planning

Lee believes much of the resistance stems from decades of car-led planning.

“We have, over the last 50 or 60 years especially, become used to a convenience culture that’s driven by the greater accessibility and affordability of the car,” he said.

“When pedestrianisation is brought up, there’s often an initial resistance because there’s a fear that reducing access to cars will reduce accessibility to shops and businesses, but really that’s a failure of public transportation planning. It’s not necessarily a failure of the idea of pedestrianisation.”

That point was echoed by Charlotte Morphet, Programme Leader and Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning at the university, who also discussed the issue on BBC Radio Berkshire.

No one-size-fits-all pedestrianisation

Charlotte argued that pedestrianisation schemes are rarely one-size-fits-all interventions and can take multiple forms depending on the needs of a town or city.

“You can do it for certain times of day,” she explained. “You could do a full pedestrianisation, which could be linked to a ring road, a bit like Kingston on the edge of London and Surrey, which was the big way of doing it in the 1960s and 1970s.”

“But you can also do things like modal filters. What that really means is that you’re allowing some cars through in certain areas at some times. It’s a bit less severe than pedestrianisation.”

She also pointed to the growing popularity of temporary interventions.

“One of the other things that’s quite popular is just doing certain days a year, like car-free days as well. Certain days a year, the town or a city becomes free to traffic and allows people to roam in what it feels like a pedestrianised way.”

That flexibility matters because many of the concerns raised in Newbury were practical rather than ideological.

Pedestrianisation concerns

Consultation responses highlighted fears around blue badge access, delivery logistics, evening safety, congestion displacement and reduced convenience for elderly residents.

Lee believes those concerns are legitimate, but says pedestrianisation schemes cannot be viewed in isolation from wider transport planning.

“The consideration can’t just be about this piece that we’re now going to pedestrianise,” he said. “There needs to be a more widely holistic approach to this as a project that brings in accessibility design, public transport infrastructure design, as well as just removing a road.”

His argument reflects a broader shift within urban planning philosophy away from purely traffic-based thinking and towards what planners describe as ‘place-making’: designing environments around social interaction, walkability and quality of experience rather than vehicle throughput.

‘Greater economic benefit’

That change has become sharper in the aftermath of the pandemic, which accelerated conversations around outdoor public space, active travel and the future role of town centres at a time when retail habits are rapidly changing.

“I think there’s a greater economic benefit in the longer term if we create places that are weighted towards experience rather than convenience,” Lee said.

“Rather than people nipping in and spending short amounts of time, trying to create environments where people are more inclined to stay.”

He added: “Our town centres and cities tend not to facilitate that way of spending time there because they’re so weighted towards the car rather than the human being.”

Research from across Europe increasingly supports the idea that pedestrian-friendly environments encourage longer dwell times, stronger café and hospitality economies, and improved perceptions of public space. Yet British schemes continue to encounter fierce political and cultural resistance, particularly where public transport infrastructure is viewed as inadequate.

Where reliable buses, cycling routes, accessible drop-off points and integrated planning exist, car reduction often becomes easier for residents to accept. Without them, road closures can feel punitive rather than transformative.

That is perhaps the real lesson emerging from Newbury.

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