Forum Topic

What's up with Dickens Yard now?

Massive section of the Planning Notices section of the Ealing Gazette last Firday devoted to planning changes to the Dickens Yard development behind the Town Hall. Are the developers trying to pull a fast one on us by getting all sorts of stuff through now that they couldnt before?Any chance that we could block these planning applications and force the developers to build us a new swimming pool as part of Dickens Yard. Those Ealingites with longer memories will recall the swimming pools behind the Town Hall where part of the Dickens Yard development is located that were demolished some fifteen years ago by the then Ealing Labour Council with a promise that they would be replaced!I suspect a replacement swimming pool behind the town hall (albeit a little belatedly) would be somewhat more of a vote winner than a car park in Southall that no one wants.These new planning appications smack to me of the same type of subterfuge as allowed the creation of a long-time unused development of the Daniel building in West Ealing!

Erin Occulata ● 5553d4 Comments

Exactly the same stunt that Barratts played with Great Western Quarter.Upped the dwellings, downed the parking spaces. Changed the terms for tenant parking to unnaffordable  (so they park in residential streets instead) and now want huge changes to the mothballed tower.All these things get passed so much easier as they go unnoticed and at construction stage employment and costs are involved so it all gets rushed through.

Michael Brandt ● 5553d

Rumour has it that the minimal community facility of a gym is being dropped at Dickens Yard. (This has happened also at Green Man Lane Estate as the gym supplier decided to pull out and occupy the four year boarded up Daniels/Lovelace House instead).It also appears that an upmarket organic food retailer wanted some expansion of its chosen retail spot so plans are being changed to accommodate said retailer.I'm sure there are other changes but life is too short to try and track and evaluate them.Finally, how do we all like the seven storey Dickens Yard residential rock face going up in Longfield Avenue across the road from Perceval House? Only another five storeys to build on top of this.......

Eric Alan Leach ● 5553d

So the planning process does not count and the law and public opionion does not count if you are a planning officer in Ealing Council?

Siobhan McGurty ● 5552d

Big questions.Planning is important because at a macro level it's about land use issues in the country and town you live in and at a micro level it's about the street you live in and your local community.Planning Law is not perfect and is more about change that continuity of quality of life.Public opinion can count for little. Remember the million people that took to the streets in London in order to tell Mr Blair not to invade Iraq - and he completely ignored public opinion and invaded Iraq anyway.I cannot imagine what life might be like being a Planning Officer in Ealing. Having read Geography at UCL in the 1960s I might have become a Planning Officer. Luckilly, perhaps, I 'escaped' into the nascent computer industry and made my 'career' there.

Eric Alan Leach ● 5552d