Notes from West Ealing Neighbours’ public meeting on 15th February at the Drayton Court Hotel

Background to Ealing’s housing needs

Cllr Shital Manro, Cabinet Member for Good Growth and New Homes, outlined Ealing’s situation. The borough has a major shortage of housing.  It is not meeting its housing target of 2175 homes a year in the London Plan. There are:

  • 169 families in hotels
  • 300+ in bed and breakfasts
  • 2500 families in temporary accommodation
  • 7500 on the waiting list
  • The Council seeks 35% (going up soon to 40%) affordable homes in new developments

1.Major developments in West Ealing

Arden Road – a legal dispute with the next door church over access to parking spaces so work delayed until this resolved

Chignell Place – quite a few applications put in but none have been acceptable to the Council so far. Awaiting a decent proposal.

Maitland Yard/Dean Gardens car park – Builders Henry have gone bust. The Council is putting the work out to tender again.

Felix Road – An A2Dominion development as part of the Green Man Lane Estate. Again, the builder Real has gone bust. It is the responsibility of A2Dominion and Rydon to find a new contractor.

Complaints about blocked pavement on south side of Felix Road due to stalled development. The Council is trying to resolve this to re-open footpath. Also a complaint about rubble dumped on children’s playground. Cllr Manro not aware of this but will look in to it. (WEN to track these actions)

Green Man Lane Estate – development stalled due to rising costs and builder Real going bust. Complaint about Bramley Road being blocked which Cllr Manro will look in to. (WEN to track this action)

Gurnell – Cllr Polly Knewstub, Cabinet Member for Thriving Communities, said this is the Council’s own site. A new 50m swimming pool will be part of the redevelopment of the leisure centre. The Council will be submitting a proposal for the whole site, to include housing, in mid-March.

Kwik Fit – the developer has now bought the site next door so has submitted a new application. Comments due by 7th March

Majestic Wine Warehouse– an application is in for student accommodation. Questions asked as to why students and not housing for residents?

Manor Road – builder Henry has gone bust. Whilst looking for a new contractor MTVH have amended the design to include a 2nd staircase. Aware it’s a difficult site next to railway line. Hope to start work again in about two months. Question about site hoarding blocking footpath – MTVH to check on this. (WEN to track this action)

St James Church – awaiting information from local diocese about its future

St James Place/Artist’s Corner – application in and comments deadline is 21st February. No comments yet received. Query raised about building over part of St James Ave and creating an unsafe area at night similar to Melbourne Avenue

Waitrose – original application was not supported by the Council as not enough affordable housing. Awaiting new application but doubts raised given the change at top of John Lewis. Will the new management team continue with their housing plans?

Shops near Costa in high street – no application received but suggestion from owner of nearby shop that it will become a special needs school

Woolworths site – long empty and now bought by a new developer

2.Dean Gardens – part way through construction of a rain garden funded by Thames Water. Much unhappiness with its current waterlogged state. A handout made available explaining the next stages of its development

3. Electricity supply

West Ealing has had a series of recent power cuts and a major fire at the Dean Gardens sub station. SSE not able to send a representative to the meeting but have given an update. Cllr Manro explained what the Council has been doing to try to alleviate the pressure on power supply, especially given all the housing development across the borough.

Later: see below for information provided by Scottish and Southern Energy Networks about power supplies.

4. Uxbridge Road – Cllr Polly Knewstub said there will not be a segregated cycle lane as not enough room, She recognized the need for better enforcement on the question of cars parked on yellow lines and hoped this would improve soon with the new in-house enforcement team starting in a few months

5. Leighton Road/Elthorne Park Road

Cllr Paul Driscoll said rumours of road closures and £1.5M to be spent on redesigning the roads are false. He has been talking to a residents group on this road about the problems of the 1 Million plus vehicle movements a year along these roads. Still early days and no plans or proposals yet and no plan to close the road altogether. Worth noting that Swycombe Ave was closed by Hounslow Council and Ealing Council has been unable to persuade them to re-open it.

6. Policing – this was raised by a number of people. A lot of dissatisfaction with the current state of policing in the area with anti-social behaviour and drug dealing a common problem. Cllr Knewstub aware of these concerns. One suggestion is to attend the Safer Neighbourhood police meetings held in each ward. (WEN to publicise these)

7. West Ealing Library

Cllr Knewstub announced that OPEN Ealing is in final stages of negotiation to take on the library from start of April.

8. Section 106 and Community Infrastructure Levy

Cllr Manro admitted that the Council had not had the systems in place to track where Section 106 moneys had been spent. However, this will soon change with new systems coming in. Also, later than most other London Boroughs, the Council will start to charge CIL on new developments.

David Highton for WEN

19th February 2024

Power Supply – information from SSE provided by Regional Customer Relationship Manager for Scottish and Southern Energy Networks

‘Thank you for inviting us to attend the meeting on 15th February. Further to our conversation last week, we are unable to attend however would like to provide an update below on the issues you raised and discussed.  ‘Thank you for inviting us to attend the meeting on 15th February. Further to our conversation last week, we are unable to attend however would like to provide an update below on the issues you raised and discussed.  

Dean Gardens substation 

We would like to thank residents of West Ealing for their patience during the disruption caused on January 19th when unfortunately, one of our assets failed in the Dean Gardens area causing a power outage to some of our customers. We have since replaced this asset and are undertaking a thorough review to understand the cause of the failure alongside a review of our network circuits in the area to see what further reinforcements may be required. 

Constraints   

Regarding concerns around constraints on our network and connection timelines we have been an active driver of industry-wide connections reform which is aiming to accelerate investment in the grid and cut queue times.  

In addition to this collaborative response to this challenge, we have also been trialing an innovative solution in West London which has helped several projects progress. This involves using a ramping approach to connect developments in increments to allow projects to progress whilst capacity becomes available.

We are working closely with both Government and industry to implement recommended solutions and approaches that will make the connections process more efficient and free up existing capacity on our network.  

Local Authority engagement  

We reached out to Ealing Council last year to engage with us on their net zero plans. We are planning on hosting in person workshops this Spring to support our local authorities on local area energy planning and will be in touch shortly with details on how to register for these. As part of our distribution operating area, representatives from Ealing Council will receive an invite and we would encourage them to attend if possible. This is part of our wider offering to local authorities within our license area to provide support to develop a coordinated and effective delivery strategy for the whole system and net zero initiatives that interact with our network, as part of Local Area Energy Plans. More broadly as part of our wider engagement we have been in regular conversations with the Greater London Authority.  

We’re currently rolling out our new tool Local Energy Net Zero Accelerator (LENZA), for local authorities in our network area. This software provides data on network constraints, empowering planners to make better informed decisions about where to install new energy assets in their local area. We’ll be rolling this out to our local authorities in the south of England including Ealing. 

If you have any questions on the above or anything else, I am more than happy to organise a meeting to discuss any of the above in more detail.’

Builder of local Council homes goes bust

Henry Construction which won £40m contract from Ealing Council to build over 130 homes has gone in to liquidation. Henry were building the new homes on the Dean Gardens car park site and the 20-storey tower by West Ealing station amongst other local developments. The constructionenquirer.com website says ‘Insolvency experts took control of the London-based residential tower builder’ last week.

It seems hundreds of suppliers and sub-contractors are left out of pocket. The website says ‘One rival main contractor said: “Henry’s have been buying work for years and it all seems to have come to a head as soaring costs and labour caught up with them” ‘.

I imagine it will take a while to hear what the Council will do to re-start these building projects.

19-storey tower proposed for Waitrose site

Following on from their initial consultation last summer, John Lewis have now put forward their more developed plans for redeveloping the Waitrose site in West Ealing in a new round of consultation. Yesterday afternoon was athe first of two open sessions for the public to view these more detailed plans. The second session is on Saturday morning (25th February) at West Ealing Library.

I dropped in to the first session and it was crowded with people so there is clearly a lot of interest in these plans. The stand out feature is probably the proposed 19-storey tower, one of four towers, which contribute many of the homes in the planned 430 homes for this site. The towers range from 10 to 19 storeys. if you are unable to get to Saturday morning’s viewing then you can find out the details on their special website.

The Ealing.News website has more useful information and, in particular, some questions from the Stop The Towers campaign with answers from a John Lewis spokesperson.

David Highton

Leeland Terrace – transforming a neglected green space

For a long time, the Seaford-Leeland Terrace corner was just a neglected spot with brambles and always far-to-reach blackberries. All that changed when I saw a notice at the West Ealing Neighbours notice board near Sainsbury’s in Melbourne Avenue (a good source of info) asking for neighbours willing to help spruce up a few forgotten council-owned green corners.

It was a good call as I was looking for volunteering activities now that my kids are mutating into teens. The first meeting was very lively, full of people bursting with ideas; and finished with the creation of a WhatsApp group, of course. The subsequent Saturdays were busy, with many hands trying to control the aforementioned bramble, the creeping and in some places overhanging ivy; and trying to devise ways to keep the fence from toppling over.

And then it happened as with some chemical reactions: after a big burst of effervescence the contents of the beaker calm down and nothing seems to happen, but if you look carefully crystals start to appear where the liquid evaporates. And so around those first crystals, a group of a few regulars (always open to newcomers and occasional passers-by) has formed, creating a new group called West Ealing Green Spaces of which the core (and to whom thanks and admiration are due) is bubbly Simone!! And Simone will say it’s not true, but when she is in the plot more people stop and chat than if it is just Mary and me, say.

Thanks to this group friendships are being created, we get to meet new people with fresh (and sometimes different) points of view, and we have created a place to be proud of. It even makes me more willing to pick up litter! For me, it has been amazing to be spreading mulch (several layers of it), to build up the raised beds, and to receive the spontaneous “thank you”, “good job” and once or twice a helping hand from passersby. Being part of this motley crew is also a great reminder that when people get together with a common objective, great things happen!

So thank you David for giving the initial push and to all helpers, be they regular or one-timers. And I have plans to tutor a bramble along the (not toppling now) fence for ease of berry picking.

By Andres Requena Gutierrez, WEGS founding member


If you want to get involved in this project then drop by on a Saturday morning at 10am and one of the group will be there. Also, if you have a site in mind you’d like to see transformed please contact westealinggreenspaces@gmail.com.

Draft 2023 Ealing Local Plan – a West Ealing Perspective

Apparently this plan ‘will shape and guide the future development (of Ealing) and help ensure this is sustainable’. This plan is expected to become approved in 2024. (The current Ealing Local Plan – the oldest in London – was published in 2010).

Ealing Matters (a group of over 60 Ealing community and residents ‘organisations) has produced a 14-point checklist of broad areas of comment and objection

To view the whole draft plan go to: www.ealing.gov.uk/info/201164/local_plan

You have until 8 February 2023 to send your comments on the plan to the Council. Comments can be sent to localplan@ealing.gov.uk

Planning Committees do not have to follow the new plan. Ostensibly all Planning Applications are judged on the merits of the application. The Local Plan will offer ‘guidance’.

There is no dedicated section on West Ealing – not even on the centre of West Ealing. This is because the Council does not view West Ealing (W13) as a separate community – but part of Ealing (W5). This is strikingly perverse as both the centre of Ealing and the centre of West Ealing have recent Council approved Neighbourhood Plans.

There is no specific plan for West Ealing but what does exist are summary details of 14 development sites. All the sites are primarily residential sites. So the message here is that the development of West Ealing is primarily about enabling an increase in the population of West Ealing.

The details of these West Ealing development sites (EA14 to EA28) can be viewed on pages 174 to 203. There are no details given about density of development i.e. how many homes can be built on each site. Below is a list of the sites with small descriptors and some comments from me:

EA14 – Arden Road car park, W13 8RA. Residential and commercial. Already has an approved Planning Application. Height can be up to 21 storeys.

EA15 – 1-19 Broadway, Aviation & Pioneer Courts, W13 9AN. Pioneer Court is a fairly new co-ownership residential block. This seems like wanton destruction of existing modern flats. Residential and mixed use. Up to 13 stores.

EA16 – 66-86 Broadway, W13 0SY. A residential and mixed use scheme which is an extended version of the 2010 Local plan site. Up to 13 storeys.

EA17 – 59-65 Broadway (Lidl), W13 9BP. This sits with the rumour that Lidl will move its supermarket across the road to the current Wilko site (90 – 94 Broadway). Apparently Lidl owns the site on which Wilko sits. Residential and retail. Up to 8 storeys.

EA18 – Sainsbury’s and Library, 77-83 Broadway, W13 9BA. This site is somewhat different to the site in the 2010 Local Plan. It includes West Ealing Library and O’Grady Court (Sheltered accommodation). In the proposed use statement there is no explicit reference to a supermarket or a library. The open space which currently runs from Leeland Terrace to Broadway is part of the development site. The northern part of this is effectively West Ealing’s town square. There is no indication that this open space will be preserved. (Some/all? of EA18 site was purchased in recent years by a developer who specialises in hotel development). Up to 13 storeys.

EA19 – 1-10 Chignell Place and 112-126 Broadway. Up to 13 storeys. If this is a tower of 13 storeys it will tower over the rear of the West London Islamic Centre. Residential-led and mixed use.

EA20 – 99-115 Broadway, W13. this development includes the St James Court open space. It’s unclear whether the open space will be retained. Up to 12 storeys. Residential-led and mixed use.

EA21 – 130-140 Broadway. W13 0TL. Residential and mixed use. Up to 13 storeys.

EA22 – 131-141 Broadway. Mostly Kwik Fit. W13 9BE. Up to 6 storeys in height. Residential-led with retail.(see separate articel below for more details of the application for this site)

EA23 – Green Man Lane Estate (GMLE). W13 0RJ. This presumably is the last stage(s) of the development began with demolition in 2011. 714 homes were agreed in the Planning Permission of September 2010 – with completion scheduled for 2022. Now over 1,000 homes are being built with an actual final completion date of who knows when. Up to 13 storeys.

EA24 – 2 Alexandria Road (Waitrose). W13. The proposed use is ‘residential and community’. There is no mention of a new supermarket. Up to 13 storeys.

EA25 – ‘West Ealing Station Approach’ 44-54 Drayton Green Road and 41/42 Hastings Road. W13 8RY (Majestic, Halfords, plus parade of shops) Residential and community. Up to 13 storeys. The latest development intention if for 408 student flats

EA26 – 119 Gordon Road, Castle House. W13 8QD. This is the second stage of developing the old BT building. No reference to building heights. . Residential-led with some affordable workspace.

EA27 – Access House & T. Mohan, Manor Road. W13 0AS. No indication of building heights. The site plan shows Jacob’s Ladder (footbridge) but gives no indication of access to the bridge from the development site. Mixed use.

EA28 – Gurnell Leisure Centre. W13 0AL. ‘Leisure-led with enabling residential use’. No reference to building heights. The Council’s first attempt at this development failed at the Planning Application stage.

It’s surprising that these other sites are not included in the plan:

+ Orion Park, Northfield Avenue. W13 9SJ

+ The old Woolworths site at 96-102 Broadway. W13 0SY

+ The remaining phase(s) of the Sherwood Close Estate (recently, bizarrely christened ‘The Bowery’).

Eric Leach

Deadline looming for objections to plans to add new storeys to Azalea Close and Court

Information about this application was posted on our Facebook page and it is covered in full detail on the Ealing Today website. In brief the freeholder wants to add a new storey to Azalea Court and two storeys to Azalea Close. The extra height will affect all the surrounding roads such as Shirley Gardens and Nightingale Road as well as the visitors to the nearby Kensington and Chelsea cemetery.

The deadline for comments is 15th August and the Ealing Today article has the planning application reference details.

Thanks to the local residents who posted this on our Facebook page.

Possible west London ban on new homes as electricity grid is out of capacity

Interesting story in today’s papers about developers in Hillingdon, Ealing and Hounslow having been told it could take another 10 years before new homes can be connected to the electricity grid. According to the Greater London Authority one of the problems for west London is a series of planned date centres that use massive amounts of electricity. Apparently, one data centre can use as much power as 10,000 homes.

Later: In Monday’s (1st August) business pages there’s a story with more detailed information about the proliferation of data centres in west London. It seems about half on the country’s estimated 200 data centres are in the South East with a large number in the Reading to Ealing area. It goes on to say that there are seven outstanding applications for new data centres in Ealing.

So what next for planned developments in West Ealing such as on the old Woolworth’s site, the tower next to the new station, the Majestic Wine Warehouse site, Waitrose’s plans to build new homes on its site and so on?