From Detached Ealing House to Nine Flats?
Ealing Today reports plans to replace a house on St Stephens Road with 9 flats. This is just one of a growing number of similar schemes across the borough. Over the past 9 months, within less than a mile of one another in central Ealing similarly extravagant plans have been put in for 1 Westbury Road, 33 Amherst Road, 77 Madeley Road, 59 Eaton Rise, 107 St Stephens Road, 88 The Avenue and 98 Gordon Road - most of which lie in Conservation Areas. Every application has generated strong local opposition with angry letters, petitions, and threats of legal action. The picture seems similar in residential areas across the Borough. Ealing’s planners used to refuse such proposals as being out of keeping with the area, and their decisions were usually supported by the Planning Inspectors. But things have drastically changed recently with little publicity. A draft New London Plan has set out to solve the capital’s housing shortage by imposing a target for Ealing to build 10,740 new homes on small sites (mainly back gardens) over the next 10 years. Why Ealing was given this target has not been explained, but the Borough does not seem to have objected to it. Similar boroughs to Ealing have far lower targets - Hounslow for instance is expected to build 6,800 homes, Richmond 6,340 and Hammersmith and Fulham just 2,980.There's been very little discussion of this new policy. What will people make of its impact on the places where they live and its affect on services like schools that are already overstretched?
Will French ● 3038d4 Comments ● 3028d