Month: February 2022

Some local residents have put forward a proposal for Northfields to become a new Conservation Area.

The reasoning behind the proposal is that: 

• Northfields is historically important. It embodies the evolution of Ealing – from its early rural past to its rapid transition in the later 19th/early 20th centuries into a thriving London suburb.
• Northfields has retained much of its character, with tree-lined streets, largely intact front gardens, and houses and shops with a wide variety of interesting architectural features.
• However, Northfields is under threat from excessive and unsympathetic development as shown the by the success of recent planning applications, e.g. for Orion Park.
• Conservation Area status would help to preserve Northfields’ human scale and make it more difficult for developers to destroy its special character.

The Council is now consulting on the proposal. Their consultation document includes a number of questions. The most important ones are whether people favour the creation of a Northfields CA, and, if so, where the boundary should be drawn. 
The proposers are trying to get as many people as possible to take part, so please do take a few minutes to give your views.
The Council has asked that responses to the consultation should be via email to localplan@ealing.gov.uk. As an alternative, they ha ve provided a postal address as follows:
Strategic Planning Economic Growth Division Place Directorate 4th Floor Perceval House14-16 Uxbridge RoadEaling W5 2HL
The consultation closes on Friday, March 18.

West Ealing Neighbours received this email from the Save Gurnell group with details of a petition it has launched to save Gurnell Leisure Centre. This follows the Council’s failed attempt to redevelop this site. See here for the background story.

The Gurnell Leisure Centre has now been closed since March 2020 – that’s nearly two years without our much loved and much needed facility.  To raise awareness of this issue, the Save Gurnell campaign team have started a petition to the Mayor of London seeking his assistance. Click here to sign the petition.

Gyms and leisure centres play a key role in helping people to be active and they will be crucial in our nation’s recovery from coronavirus, in addition to providing wider health, wellbeing, and community benefits. The current position is totally unacceptable.

Since the planning application was refused in March 2021, there has been a distinct lack of communication from the new leadership team at Ealing Council.  That’s why we have started a petition to the Mayor of London, asking him to step in and assist as he has with the National Sports Centre at Crystal Palace.We would appreciate it if you could forward this update and petition to your members. Please don’t let Gurnell go the same way as Ealing Cinema.