Great Queen Street Streateries for outdoor dining

Overview

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how people in Camden live, travel and work. We want our streets to have more safe space for everyone to walk and cycle, for children to get to and from school safely and healthily, for businesses to be able to flourish, to reduce carbon emissions from vehicles and for you to be breathing cleaner air.  

To help, we have been making temporary changes across Camden in our Streateries Programme: Streateries change parking bays to spaces in the road for businesses to place tables and chairs for al fresco dining, protected by barriers. This means pedestrians, wheelchair and buggy users can pass safely on the pavement. 

We want to ensure that our streets support a strong recovery from the pandemic and provide a lasting legacy of greener, safer, healthier travel, places for people to spend time and enjoy, and the regeneration of our local town centres and High Streets.  To support this we are consulting on extending some of our existing Streateries for a further 18 months trial period to aid the recovery and long-term success of our town centres and High Streets.

High Streets play a crucial role in community life; they are places where residents, workers and visitors shop, work, socialise, and access culture and services. However, they have been facing a range of challenges in recent years with a shift away from traditional retail to online shopping, accelerated by the pandemic.  In response Camden has developed a Future High Streets programme  to support our high streets into a robust recovery but also reorientate them for a new future role so that they continue to add to community life. Streateries are essential for delivering this vision:  they help to revitalise streets, creating destinations for residents and visitors to meet, socialise and spend time, adding to street life and vibrancy, increasing footfall, and regenerating the wider local economy. 

Why your views matter

There are several restaurants and cafes on the section of Great Queen Street, between Drury Lane and Parker Street, in Covent Garden.  The Streateries were implemented as a temporary measure in May 2021 for an initial 18 months' period, to November 2022. We are now proposing to retain the scheme as a trial, using an Experimental Traffic Order (ETO) for a further 18 months, to May 2024 (subject to the business securing a tables and chairs licence), and we want to know your views on this proposal:   

• Keeping the existing Streatery outside nos. 32-35 Great Queen Street. This space was created from the removal of 17 metres of residents’ parking to create spaces in the road for outdoor dining protected by barriers.  
• Keeping the existing Streatery outside nos. 37-39 Great Queen Street. This space was created from the removal of 20 metres of shared use loading and ‘out of hours’ residents’ parking, to create spaces in the road for outdoor dining protected by barriers.  
• Outside no. 60 Great Queen Street (Freemasons’ Hall):
  Retain 10 metres loading bay.  This space was created from the removal of 10 metres of pay by phone parking space.
   
• Retain 20 metres of shared use residents’ parking and pay by phone parking space.  This space was created from the conversion of pay by phone parking space.  

To view the plans and find out more about this proposal, click on the links in the Related Section at the bottom of this page.

We want to engage our local residents, businesses and stakeholders in changes happening on their streets and to know what you think about these  proposals.

What happens next

After the consultation, a decision report will be produced and published online via our website. Local residents and stakeholders will be notified of the outcome. The report will consider a broad range of information including consultation responses, feedback received during the current trial period, relevant policies and other data/information including any monitoring information collected during the recent trial period.

All of this information will be considered in making a recommendation in the report about whether to proceed with the Streateries for a further 18 months trial period.