Following a long campaign outlined in previous articles on this topic, I am overjoyed to announce that the City of London Corporation have stated that from Monday 28 July, licensed (black) taxis will be able to travel between Poultry and Cornhill, Monday to Friday 7am to 7pm, as part of a new experimental traffic order at Bank junction.
This follows the Court of Common Council decision in June 2024 to proceed with an experiment. It was agreed at Planning and Transportation Committee in February 2025 to proceed with a route that allowed for an east and west route across the junction for taxis.
This is a phased introduction of the experiment, with the westbound movement for taxis between Cornhill to Poultry to follow later this year.
The phased approach is to facilitate the required Highway works associated with the 1 Leadenhall Street Development which will also begin on 28 July. This will mean that taxis are unable to enter Cornhill from Leadenhall Street until these works complete, which is expected to be in October, due to a westbound closure on Leadenhall Street.
Once the works on Leadenhall Street have completed, and taxis are able to travel in both directions between Poultry and Cornhill, a 6-month public consultation will begin, and the associated monitoring for the experiment will start.
Once the consultation and the monitoring are completed, it is expected that a report to Planning and Transportation Committee will be submitted in the autumn of 2026 to consider the success of the experiment and to take a final decision on whether the experimental order will be made permanent.
Information on the launch of the consultation will follow in due course, but if there are any urgent queries in the meantime, the project website will kept updated.
A good day for accessibility in the City of London!