Reminder: It’s West Ealing Family day tomorrow!

Just a reminder about the first ever West Ealing Family Day this Saturday.  There’s something for everyone from facepainting for kids, food, music and dance in Melbourne Avenue; 100 varieties of apple at the farmers’ market in
Leeland Road; or freshly pressed local apple juice, local crafts and more in St James Avenue. Do please drop in and join us in celebrating everything that’s good about living in West Ealing.
Just a taste of some of what’s happening in each of the three streets:
Leeland Road – will have an apple themed farmers’ market celebrating National Apple Day (October 21st) with:
  • over 100 rare and different varieties of apple on display
  • cider tasting
  • the longest peel competition
  • apple and spoon race
Melbourne Avenue
  • facepainting and other activities for children
  • Dr Bike to help you get the most from your cycle
  • food stalls
  • an exciting line up of music and dance including a steel band, Sri Lankan dancing, punk/folk with King Ralph, indie/rock with The Grifters, Bhangra dancing and much, much more from 10am to 4pm
St James Avenue
  • WEN’s Abundance stall pressing and selling apple and pear juice from local fruit along with home-made toffee apples
  • a craft market selling locally made goods
  • a cafe in St James Church
  • art exhibition in St James Church
  • a blank canvas for you to paint on to produce a totally unique artwork for the day
  • activities for children
  • WEN stall about the future of West Ealing 2011-2026
We hope to see you there.

Ealing Council’s Future of Ealing Meeting Discusses Quality of Life Issues

Vice Chair of West Ealing Neighbours, Eric Leach, looks at how Ealing Council is proposing to provide for services to 2026, and finds much to be lacking, especially in terms of community infrastructure.

In the real world residents are interested in being happy, safe, healthy and fulfilled. If they are parents they want their children to receive a good  education. In terms of land use, meeting these needs requires designating ‘preferred use’ on land to be used for providing a whole range of services. Top of the list for these services is the need to provide adequate facilities for maintaining law and order, healing the sick and teaching our children. Also on the list are open space, transport, play, cultural and sporting needs.

On Wednesday 13th October 2010, Ealing Council convened a public meeting to explain how it was going to allocate ‘preferred land use’ for these purposes over the next 15 years.

Ealing Council’s home building plans over this period include introducing over 20,000 new residents into the so-called Uxbridge Road Corridor (Southall to Acton). The Council’s plans for home building are very specific. For example in the centre of West Ealing 18 sites are identified for building 1,245 new homes. The vast proportion of sites involve demolition of existing buildings. However the plans to build new Police Stations, healthcare centres or schools along this corridor are very vague. In West Ealing centre for example no specific sites are identified to provide these additional facilities to support the new 3,000+ residents.

As many residents at the meeting pointed out, the Uxbridge Road corridor is heavily developed. Consequently there is no space to build these new ‘infrastructure’ facilities. The Council does not suggest demolishing existing buildings to provide space for schools, healthcare or Policing centres.

The provision for Primary education in West Ealing (2011 – 2026) I found especially worrying. There are only two State Primary Schools in West Ealing centre – St John’s and Drayton Green. There is no realistic scope for expanding these schools unless they are rebuilt as educational tower blocks. In the south of West Ealing, Fielding Primary has already been expanded to a staggering 870 children (by building on the playing field). Hathaway Primary in the north has a playing field that could be built on (presumably) but no plans exist to extend Hathaway. All very strange. There is some vague commitment to search for a new Primary School site in central Ealing. Given that we are now in year 6 of this formal planning process the commitment to ‘searching’ is really not that impressive.

No preferred land use details exist at for all for any cultural infrastructure in the whole of Ealing.

There is no commitment to building an integrated transport hub around Ealing Broadway Station.

UK Planning Law is clearly not helpful to residents or Councils in the provision of infrastructure. Money for infrastructure is apparently to be found by collecting up the financial crumbs from the rich property man’s table. The latter is either a rich Housing Association (eg A2Dominion) or a private property development company (eg St George). Apparently there are never anywhere near enough crumbs to make any kind of infrastructure ‘meal’. Ealing Council’s track record in enforcing these crumb collection exercises (S106/Planning Gain) appears to be very poor.

Formally the meeting was reviewing the document ‘Ealing 2026: Infrastructure Delivery Plan: September 2010: Ealing Regeneration & Housing’. This document is part of Ealing Council’s ‘Evidence’ to support its Local Development Framework proposals.

Only 25 people turned up to this meeting. This included two Conservative Councillors but no Labour Councillors. No senior Planning or Economic Regeneration Officers bothered to turn up. The meeting was held in a little known, difficult to find community centre in the daunting South Acton Estate.

West Ealing is in dire need of a cinema: a pop up cinema would be a great addition to our community

Allison Franklin and Chris Gilson look at the possibilities of having a pop up cinema in West Ealing.

Pop up shops and restaurant are common in London nowadays: an empty retail unit is taken over for a few weeks with minimal fittings and then it’s gone. This concept has now extended to cinemas; films are being shown in places as diverse as old railway tunnels, under motorway flyovers and even abandoned petrol stations.

There are thousands of square feet of unused office space along the Uxbridge Road. This space could be easily used as a pop up cinema. A pop up cinema would need:

  • empty available indoor space. There’s plenty of that locally
  • a licence to show films
  • some comfy furniture (sourced via Freecycle) or people could bring their own
  • basic catering
  • tickets (Rymans. Sorted.)

Pop up cinemas are very attractive as they will provide a way for people to get together and meet their neighbours and other locals, and not break the bank going to the pictures.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments section below.

If you’re interested in helping out with starting a pop up cinema in West Ealing, pop us an email.

West Ealing Family Day 23 October

West Ealing Neighbours, local businesses and traders and the Council have joined together to put on the first ever West Ealing Family Day. Across the centre of West Ealing in Leeland Road, Melbourne Avenue and St James Avenue we will be putting on a series of events and activities for all the family.  The three streets will be differently themed:

Leeland Road will have a specially extended farmers’ market with apples as a theme (it’s Apple Day on October 21st). There will be an exhibition of over 100 rare and different varieties of apple, cider tasting, apple and spoon racing and an apple juicing demonstration

Melbourne Avenue will be for food and entertainment with a stage set up for a variety of local music and dance events as well as children’s entertainment and food stalls

St James Avenue is all about what people local people are producing, whether its crafts or artworks, and will play host to the first ever street craft market in West Ealing.  WEN’s Abundance team will be busy making apple and pear juice all pressed from locally picked fruit and St James Church will house an art exhibition by the Brent Lodge Park Arts Collective  – a collective of artists with and without learning difficulties.  The church will also open its cafe where you can put your feet up and try locally made cakes and sandwiches.

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