West Ealing Neighbours Blog

Around 150 residents packed into the Ballroom at The Drayton Court Hotel at 7:30pm. WEN Vice Chair Eric Leach chaired the meeting. Four Ealing Council Councillors attended – Councillors Quansah, Driscoll, Knewstub and Manro. The latter two sit on Ealing Council’s Cabinet.

West Ealing Community Library (WECL)

Catherine Fitzgibbon, who is leading the Library project, explained that the West Ealing Community CIC (of which David Highton is a Director) is negotiating with Ealing Council to replace Open Ealing (and prior to that Ealing & Hounslow Voluntary Services) as library leaseholders. WECL is run entirely by volunteers and is currently open Tuesday to Friday 10am to 5pm. WECL Friends was recently established and more volunteers are needed. Contact info@wecl.org.uk. All residents were invited to an Open Day at the library on Saturday 5 April 2025 – which will feature music, poetry, story telling, puppet shows and face painting.

Feeling Safe in West Ealing

Kofi Nyamah, Ealing Council’s Community Engagement Manager discussed the Council’s Your Voice, Your Town (YVYT) and Town Teams initiatives. Up to £9 million of Community Infrastructure Levy could be spent based on Town team’s recommendations 2025 – 2039. The main subject of residents’ concerned revealed by YVYT research in 2014 was ‘feeling safe’.

Awful crime figures for Central West Ealing were announced at the meeting for January 2025:

All Reported Crime: 324 incidents

Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB): 135 incidents

Violent and Sex Crimes: 53 incidents

These monthly figures were worse than any month in 2024.

Resident Dave Randles derived these figures from the Crime Maps at www.police.uk

David Highton, WEN Chair, announced the results of a WEN ‘feeling safe’ survey of WEN members. It was small sample size (230 – 273 replies) but the results are very sobering:

Q1 Is ASB in West Ealing a concern for you?

A1 Yes: 94.14%    No: 5.86%

Q2 Do you feel safe in your neighbourhood?

A2 Yes: 23.94%      No: 76.06%

Q3 Do you feel less safe than a year ago?

A3 Yes: 78.13%   No: 21.88%

Q4 Have you been directly affected by ASB in the past 12 months?

A4 Yes: 72.41%   No: 27.59%

Q5 Did you report it to the Police?

Yes: 29.13%  No: 70.87%

The Police Sargeant in charge of West Ealing centre spoke about what actions the Police had taken recently. He also pointed out his slim resources and re-iterated the need for residents to report every incident to the Police. The audience showed its appreciation for the Police efforts.

Lammas Park & East Lodge

Exposurebox videos of digging up the park and e.coli in the park were shown.

The number of objections to the East Lodge Planning Application has exceeded 3,100. In the chair’s experience of 20 years examining Planning Applications, this number is the highest number ever recorded.

The Building Preservation Notice for East Lodge has now been granted. This gives 6 month’s protection from demolition. Council efforts to have East Lodge Listed by Historic England are still being pursued by the Council. A Listing would, theoretically, protect the Lodge in perpetuity.

WEN has recently discovered that a London-wide consortium of all London Boroughs, TfL, Thames Water, Thames Flood Officers and the Environment Agency is behind the digging up of Dean Gardens, Lammas Park and more recently Belvue Park in Northolt. They are implementing a ‘Sustainable Drainage Action Plan (LoSUDS)’.

Waitrose Development

A decision by the Planning Inspector is awaited. The Council thinks this will happen imminently but Justine Sullivan of Stop the Towers said it might take some time.

Gurnell Leisure Centre Development

The GLA Stage 2 response to the Council approved Planning Application criticised building on a floodplain and on MOL, the  footprint and height and only 35% affordable on public land but….decided to leave the decision to Ealing Council. The £100m housing development will be carried out by an external contractor – probably Wilmot Dixon.

Sherwood Close Development

Residents’ champion Antonia Moutsopoulou detailed safety, security, ASB, maintenance and Clarion Housing problems. Councillor Quansah volunteered to meet Antonia on site and help her deal with residents’ problems.

Dean Gardens Development

Since Henry – the builders – went bust in June 2023 the two unfinished tower blocks have not attracted a new builder to deal with the problem and complete the development. It’s thought if/when a new builder is engaged the blocks may have to be demolished and the Planning Application process begun all over again.

Old Woolworths Building Site , 96 – 102 Broadway West Ealing

New proposals for an apartment hotel with 268 suites has been proposed. See BroadwayEaling.site for details and how to comment. The frontage of the proposed  9 storey building elegantly mimics the frontage of the 1922 Woolworths building.

St Mary’s Cathedral

A wonderful repurposing of the St James Church, which has not been in use for years. The opening of the Assyrian Church of the East Cathedral on 15 February 2025 was attended by 500 people from all over the world. WEN is building up good relations with the Cathedral management.

Green Spaces and WEN Abundance

 Green Spaces is a local community initiative for co-ordinating volunteers to recover and re-present small green spaces (westealinggreenspaces.org). Abundance is on ongoing WEN project which involves harvesting fruit in public places and, with permission, in private gardens. The fruit is turned into jams, chutneys and cordial. Both projects are volunteer based and more volunteers are needed.

The public meeting ended at 9:00pm.

Community Party on Saturday 5th April 10am – 4pm

The new Lidl store in West Ealing opens its doors on Thursday 20th February.

Sainsbury’s will close an hour earlier at 9pm Monday to Saturday from Monday 3rd March. Is this a result of an increase in business rates and employer national insurance making that last hour from 9-10pm uneconomic?

An area in West Ealing south from Sainsbury’s in Melbourne Ave has been cordoned off by the police following a serious incident last night. It’s not clear exactly where the incident was and what happened but it must be serious for such a large area to be cordoned off. Roads closed include Melbourne Ave, Regina Road, St James Ave, Adelaide rd, St Kilda Road and Oaklands Road.

Tuesday 10.15am

Update 1pm

According to the MyLondon news website a man was stabbed and killed in the Oaklands Road area of Hanwell last night

Some of our members have talked to us about their concerns. Now, we want to ask a wider audience for their views. This survey we have set up is quick and simple to complete. The aim of the survey is just to get some sense of whether residents of West Ealing are concerned about anti-social behaviour, whether they feel is is getting better or worse and so on. We would be very grateful if you can spare a few minutes to complete our survey. The survey will stay open until Thursday 20th February. We will publish the results as soon as we can after that date along with our ideas about how WEN will use the results.

The survey link is now closed. We will publish the results here in due course.

1.Chair’s report

David Highton, chair, gave a brief report on the past year. He started by saying that when WEN started in 2006 there was very little time spent on considering major developments. In the first years, WEN got involved in activities such as preserving the heritage lampposts, improving pedestrian safety at the Lido Junction and helping establish the arts centre OPEN Ealing. Now, most of our time is spent on major developments – many of which are on tonight’s agenda.

There are two other recent activities he wanted to highlight. Firstly, the efforts made to tackle anti-social behaviour within the O’Grady Court sheltered flats (above the library) which has spilt over on to Melbourne Avenue. A number of agencies were involved and the result is that Peabody Housing which manages the flats has employed security guards to prevent non-residents getting in to the building. Secondly, the library was facing possible closure as it was proving too much for OPEN Ealing to run alongside their arts centres. Neither the Council nor OPEN wants to close the library but a way forward needs to be found. In response to this, WEN helped bring together some dozen interested groups and residents. They met on Monday (21^st October) and out of this came a group willing to look at the vision and appropriate governance for the library. This is an encouraging first step towards finding a solution to keeping the library open and enabling it to be at the heart of our local community.

WEN has also been active in supporting efforts to save Victoria Hall, secure the future of Warren Farm and play a part in  Save Ealing’s Centre’s work. Finally, WEN has an active book club and an Abundance project selling its own apple juice through a local deli.

Accounts

Thanks to our treasurer, Andrew Cazalet, for producing the accounts. As at the end of December 2023 WEN has £1324 in the bank. With the cost of this meeting and the one held in February there will be very little left in the bank. Contributions towards the cost of this meeting would be very gratefully received.

Election of committee members

David Highton said the three existing post holders of Chair (David Highton), Vice Chair (Eric Leach) and treasurer (Andrew Cazalet) were silling to stand again. Ian Potts proposed the three and Gillian Brown seconded this.

New committee members

Finally, David Highton thanked all the current members of the committee for their hard work over the past year. He stressed the importance to WEN’s future of new people joining the committee to bring new ideas, enthusiasm and energy.

2. Public Meeting

This part of the meeting was chaired by Eric Leach.

Leeland Terrace

This a part completed development in Maitland Yard/Dean Gardens car park off Leeland Terrace. The builder Henry went bust some time ago. Cllr Manro said the Council is still looking for a builder to take over. In response to a question, he said there are no plans to demolish and start again. No time scale  yet for the works to re-start.

 Green Man Lane Estate

Phase 4 will be 396 homes and is still being reviews by the GLA. After the first contractor went bust the new contractor building the town houses on Felix Road is nearing completion with the first residents having moved in.

Gurnell

Plans include 295 homes in five towers. The new planning application should be submitted by the Council early next year. Cllr Polly Knewstub spoke about the plans and was confident that a top quality project, including a new swimming pool, would be delivered. She also talked about the different ways funds could be raised to cover the costs.

Kwik Fit

This development is for shared living ( a bit like student accommodation) for people of all ages. It will be 134 co-living studio flats in towers up to 9 storeys. Eric Leach raised questions about how this would work in practice and mentioned a similar development where this idea had not worked and had been dropped.

Cllr Manro said the developers for this site are ones which do get on with the work so likely to start soon.

Faulty Towers

This refers to the three tower blocks being built within close proximity of each other – Waitrose, Manor Road and the Majestic Wine site. The councillors didn’t comment on the likely traffic chaos caused by the three simultaneous developments in Manor Road (tower next to station), Hastings Road (Tide Towers) and Alexandria Road for Waitrose.

Tide Tower

This is the old Majestic Wine Warehouse site. Plans are for 448 student bedsits in four towers up to 13 storeys high. The demolition phase has been completed and building work has begun.

Waitrose

The planning application is for 428 homes in six towers – the tallest approaching the height of Big Ben.

The planning application for this development was not determined by the Council within the required timeframe. As a result, John Lewis Partnership has taken it to the Planning Inspectorate to rule for a decision. The Council has decided not to contest this. However, Save The Towers is contesting it and is seeking funds to help it cover its costs.

In response to some strong views on the Council’s decision not to contest this , Cllr Manro explained that the Council required a minimum of 30% affordable homes on this site. The plans had only 20%. The council believe it was negotiating in good faith with John Lewis only ‘to have the rug pulled from beneath it’ by John Lewis. He went on to say that the cost of contesting this application could run in to some £100,000s and this was considered to be too much and not a good use of the Council’s limited resources. He also added that another John Lewis development had proposed just 10% affordable housing and this had been accepted by the local borough, so this would not have helped Ealing Council’s case.

Cllr Manro then made a wider point about how difficult it is for the Council to meet its own targets for affordable housing. They are only managing to reach half their annual target of 2,000 affordable homes a year.  The period of austerity and inflation had pushed a number of builders in to bankruptcy and this had slowed down building these homes. In addition, the costs to housing associations of both the fire remediation work post-Grenfell and  repairing existing stock because of mould and damp mean that housing associations have much less money for new builds.

Stop The Towers

Justine Sulliivan, co-chair of Stop The Towers, outlined why they were willing to represent Ealing residents in opposing John Lewis’s plans for the Waitrose site. She was strongly of the view that if this case was lost then the whole borough would feel the impact of these massive style developments and would be powerless to stop them. The Government Inquiry starts on 19^th November. Save The Towers needs financial help to pay its lawyers. Visit their website https://stopthetowers.info to find out how you can help.

Commuter Congestion

Eric Leach commented that the rush hour trains of the Elizabeth Line are already crowded by the time they reach West Ealing. The pressure will only increase with the 7,000 or so new homes being built in Southall on the old gas works site along with the towers by West Ealing station.  He put in a plea for the Council to lobby for more trains on this western branch of the Elizabeth Line.

Old Woolworths site

Still a pile of rubble with no sign of action. Cllr Manro believed this site is still for sale and so no timescale when this site will be developed.

Manor Road Towers

144 flats in two towers – 12 and 18 storeys high. Work is back underway after the initial building contractor went bust.

St James Place

144 flats with towers up to 16 storeys. This is the same developer as for the Kwik Fit site so work should start fairly soon.

Electricity and Water Supply

There were some strong views on the potential problems and likelihood of a shortage of these two utilities. A question from the audience highlighted the impact of data centres on electricity supply (one data centre requires on average enough electricity to supply 50,000 homes). What was the Council doing to secure adequate supplies of both water and electricity? Cllr Manro’s argument was that building would continue and the supplies would have to be provided. The Council could not stop trying to build the homes required for the borough because of this.

Lammas Park

A lot of concern as to just what is happening with the drainage works, the lack of information on the scale of the works and the worries about children’s safety near the newly created ponds. Cllr Gareth Shaw explained that the project was being undertaken with the Environment Agency and was about capturing and slowly releasing excess water from the surrounding area. Work has stopped as a new planning application is required to complete the works. Once complete the works will be connected to the Thames Water system. In terms of safety, Cllr Shaw explained that the planting around the edges of the ponds would act as a deterrent to children to stop them getting too close to the water. There were concerns expressed about loss of green space and a lack of consultation.  

David Highton for the WEN committee

29^th October 2024