Category: Community

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 7^th 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 2^nd 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 21^st 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

19^th 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 19^th 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.’