Put simply what our National Debt actually means is that every man, woman and child in this country ‘owes’ over £13,000. We found out in October that Green Man Lane Estate redevelopment will cost £137 million. The money appears to be coming from A2Dominion, who receive £150 million funding each year from the UK Government. My question is then that given this is our money (or more correctly money borrowed on our behalf by our Government) should we really be spending it in this way or at all? We can’t as a nation (or as individuals) carry on living on ever increasing debt. Some more numbers (from the Office of National Statistics) to weep over – UK Government borrowing for this financial year will exceed £175 billion; our National Debt is 59% of the UK GDP; and public sector borrowing for the six months to September 2009 was £77.3 billion [...]

Last night I attended a well run and well attended Hanwell Community Forum (HCF) meeting. The only item on the agenda was Ealing’s LDF and Ealing Council’s Steve Barton was in attendance as main presenter. Steve, an Ealing resident, is Interim Planning Policy Manager for the Council. HCF’s Carolyn Brown opened the meeting with a short overview on Ealing’s LDF draft Core Strategy. This was most useful to the audience and was sadly lacking from the four previous Council organised LDF Public Consultation meetings. Also well worth noting is that HCF, a volunteer run organisation, managed to attract over 40 resident attendees. This was in contrast to the resident turnout at the Council’s organised meetings in Southall (20 residents) and Greenford (32 residents) – both much larger towns. It does lead one to wonder exactly on what the Council spends its annual £3 million publicity budget. Steve’s presentation has really [...]

Ealing Civic Society’s (ECS) Judy Harris has just pointed out to me that there are two Comment Forms in the LDF document set. I’ve just downloaded the second ‘one’. It’s a feedback form on the Core Strategy itself (which LBE confusingly calls its Development Strategy. It’s 18 pages long. So we now have in total 326 pages in the LDF document set and 159 questions to answer and options to review. Judy told me that it took her TWO WEEKS to complete the two Comment Forms. Quite extraordinary. I attended a meeting today in Perceval House with ECS, WEN, Rydon (builders), A2Dominion (property developer) and Conran (architects). The meeting was about the regeneration of the 10 acre Green Man Lane Estate (GMLE) in central West Ealing. No-one from LBE’s elected or salaried Regeneration teams attended this meeting. Maybe they were worried that one of us would ask them to explain [...]

Ealing Council’s web site Home Page is featuring – as its main news story – an Ealing Council press release ‘Acton residents called up for Town Hall team’ (PR 19, dated 24th September, 2009). The story invites Acton residents ‘…to get involved and help shape the future of Acton’. These words come from the mouth of the Council’s Regeneration supremo Councillor David Millican. It is he who is the elected Member responsible for the Local Development Framework (LDF) What the release does not allude to – incredibly – is the LDF Public Consultation meeting taking place in Acton in just five days time (7:00pm , St Mary’s Church, The Mount, Acton, Thursday 1st October) at which the future of Acton 2011 to 2026 will be publicly debated. Doesn’t the Publicity Department talk to Cabinet Councillors? Doesn’t the Planning Department talk to the Publicity Department? Doesn’t the Regeneration Team talk to [...]

Last night’s West Ealing Neighbours (WEN) monthly committee meeting was almost completely devoted to Ealing’s Local Development Framework Public Consultation. exercise. Public Consultation Document Set ‘Grows’ to 308 Pages On 8th September when I spent two hours getting hold of the LDF papers, one of the documents – ‘Background Papers 5: Community Consultation & Evidence Base Audit Trail’ – was 15 pages long. Last night David Highton, WEN’s Chair put on the table a document with exactly the same cover but this document was 91 pages long! This strongly suggests to me that four days into the formal Public Consultation period (starting 4th September) the full LDF document set was not actually available. What it also means that the LDF is not as I first counted up on 9th September 232 pages long but is indeed 308 pages long. The substantially ‘new’ 91 page document attempts to describe earlier Ealing [...]