Year: 2018

Lots of activities for families in West Ealing this weekend:

Easter Arts & Crafts in Melbourne Avenue Friday to Sunday 11am-5pm

• make an Easter Bunny mask
• paint your own Easter eggs
• Easter colouring

Plus a chance to win a super Easter Egg.

Also, the BID Bunny Easter Trail.  Pick up your free map from Wilko and follow the trail to find the Easter pictures and collect your prize at the end of the trail. Runs from 24th March to 7th April 9.30am – 5pm in West Ealing town centre.

Look here for more details.

Both events funded by the In West Ealing (West Ealing Business Improvement District)

A Freedom of Information (FOI) reply has revealed plans to create a 50 bed frailty/elderly unit within refurbished parts of the closed down EDGH. The FOI reply document arrived on 21 February 2018. The FOI planning document is dated 16 June 2017. This document has the snappy title of ‘Client section (call-off) of a PSCP from the Procure 22 Framework: Information Pack for SaHF/STP Implementation Programme for London North West Healthcare NHS Trust’. Some eight months later I can’t believe there isn’t a more recent version of the document.

Rather confusingly the frailty/elderly residential unit for 50 people is called ‘Ealing Local Hospital’ (ELH). The 2012 NHS North West London ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ (SaHF) changes never envisioned a ‘Local Hospital’ offering in-patient beds. Apparently the writing of the detailed/full business case for closing the 327 bedded EDGH and creating the 50 bedded ELH will commence in March 2018. ‘External approval’ of this business case is not expected until December 2019. These dates should be taken with a pinch of salt as they are eight months old, the overall SaHF business case was rejected by NHS Improvement and NHS England in November 2017 and NHS bosses are famous for creating schedule dates that are never met.

What will be housed in this ELH is still not set in stone. An Urgent Care Centre is likely to remain and to this will be added a range of day care, outpatients, diagnostic, therapy and maybe mental health services. However what is clear is that there will be no ‘traditional’ A&E services, no intensive care services, no operating theatres and no ambulances will ever deliver seriously injured or chronically sick Ealing residents to the ELH. One of the two 25 bed ‘Intermediate Care’ wards at Clayponds in South Ealing will close and effectively move to ELH.

Seemingly there will be no new build on the EDGH site. So any grandiose plans that might once have existed for a new ELH are no more. It’s all now about ‘refurbishment’ of the ‘light’, ‘heavy’ or ‘major’ flavour. London Borough of Ealing (LBE) planning permission may not be needed for this re-purposing.

There’s only one explicit mention of demolition on the EDGH site, with no spatial details provided. If it’s going to be all refurbishing and repurposing, this may result in no or limited land release for housing. LBE may be disappointed by this and may lose some interest in the site as it careers headlong into meeting Mayor Khan’s target of 28,000 new homes in Ealing by 2029.

The date for the closure of EDGH is by no means clear. Maybe one could reasonably surmise that the EDGH closure process began in July 2015 with the closure of Maternity services at the hospital. The opening date of the ELH is also far from clear. It’s December 2023 on page 3 and June 2025 on page 9 of the document.

Eric Leach, 21 February 2018

A photo in today’s business news reminded me just how fantastic looking  the Hoover building is on the A40 at Perivale.  It’s good to read that its restoration is nearly complete.  As well as the facade, there are some stunning art deco features inside which I happened to see some photos of in the Council’s glossy magazine for developers Ealing London.

Detail of lift dial

There’s a brief history of the building on the IDM properties website. The restored building is being converted in to 66 apartments.  What about the Gillette building on the A4 next?

Photos courtesy of IDM Properties

On 16 January 2018, Ealing Council Cabinet approved the West Ealing Centre Neighbourhood Forum (WECNF) Neighbourhood Plan. WECNF, a Government designated body of volunteers, began working on the plan as an interim body in May 2012 and continued as a designated body as from March 2013.

On 3 May 2018, at the same time as and in the same Polling Stations as the Ealing Councillor Elections, two referenda will take place on the plan. One is for local businesses and the other is for local residents. Ealing Council has yet to announce the boundary of the referendum area. If over 50% of those who vote in both referenda vote ‘Yes’ then the Neighbourhood Plan will be adopted by Ealing Council as the statutory planning guidance for the West Ealing Centre Neighbourhood Area. As such it would join the Ealing Council Local Plan, The London Plan and the National Planning Policy Framework as the set of planning guides for property developers to follow in central West Ealing.

Eric Leach

Chair, WECNF

www.wecnf.org

I’m the first to admit I find fly-tipping and feeding pigeons extremely irritating.  Both are anti-social and give no thought to the problems they cause. However, when I saw that someone had emptied the contents of their food waste bin on the patch of grass by Sainsbury’s …….well, that’s just too much.  I’ve cleaned it up this morning but how could someone think this was a good idea?  The pigeons aren’t likely to eat eggshells, teabags, banana skins and orange peel. It will just attract rats.

The Council knows this patch of grass is a problem and will, I hope, one day soon redesign the area to put in some communal flower beds and signs asking people not to feed the pigeons. WEN has offered to help and I’m sure we can get volunteers to help when the time comes. In the meantime though I just hope no one else thinks it’s good for wildlife to empty out the contents of their food waste bin and let it rot away and attract rats.

And today (Friday) there was a pile of bread in exactly the same place. However, when I went back a bit later to clear it up it had already gone. So many thanks to whoever was kind enough to do that.

The mobikes with their distinctive livery of orange and black have suddenly started appearing all across Ealing. They arrived in St James Ave West Ealing at the end of last week.

Mobikes, owned by Beijing Mobike  Technology Company, are very popular in China.  I can personally vouch for their popularity In Shanghai where bicycle riders seem to make no difference between roads and pavements!.

The idea of having lots of bikes available to hire is a great idea and they make good use of modern technology. However, a key question is whether users will return them to designated places or leave them dotted about the streets?  Time will tell.