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Meanwhile just a quick note to point you at the website http://www.ealingtoday.co.uk/ which is FULL of local information including important matters like Crossrail, The Cinema site and, of course, The Town Hall sell-off. They have some adverts of course but they don't interrupt all the local stories - have a look!!

UPDATED 7th February 2021: Ealing Planning Committee are to discuss the Perceval House planning application at their meeting on 17th February.

Urgent action is required as the deadline for objections is now

On 17^th Feb the Council’s Plans to redevelop Perceval House go to Planning Committee. If  they are approved the impact on  Central Ealing will be devastating.  There is still time to object.  Save Ealing’s Centre asks you to do so if you’ve not done so already and that you ask everyone in your groups to do so as well by forwarding this pdf or email to inform them. You can then click on this link  to comment.

There are quite a lot of  interesting documents available:-

The SEC objection leaflet for sending on to others is HERE

SEC's own letter of objection to Ealing Council is HERE

The GLA (Greater London Authority) initial report on the plans to replace Perceval House is HERE

SEC has also written to the GLA with avery full submission which contains (from about page 14 onwards) a load of amazing photos showing the impact that the proposed building will have on Ealing Centre. Well worth a look just for those!  HERE


UPDATED 16th January 2021: Our latest newsletter uploaded via the "Newsletters link" above
2021 STARTS HERE!!    What can possibly be in store?



Perceval House, a large "spanner-shaped" building designed by Sidney Kaye, Eric Firmin & Partners was erected to the west of the town hall, as additional accommodation for council officers and their departments in 1983. Initially referred to as the "Civic Centre", it was renamed "Perceval House" after Spencer Perceval, a former Prime Minister who, before he was assassinated , lived in Elm Grove in Ealing

Stop the Perceval House Development

Urgent action is required as the deadline for objections is now

for the Plannng Committee meeting scheduled for 17th February 2021!

 You may have seen notices for the redevelopment of Ealing Council’s offices at Perceval House. The Developer’s images are extremely misleading, as is so much else they have written. This scheme would do immeasurable damage to Ealing.

 Opposing these plans will be a big challenge. They are being promoted by Ealing Council in partnership with developers Vistry, who put in the planning application.  As the site owner, Ealing Council is only interested in packing as much on the site as they can, irrespective of any harm they cause. As the planning authority, the Council is supposed to assess the impact of the development on behalf of us all, but they are behaving they are behaving like the greediest developers. It is using its dual status to demand far too much from the developers - brand new Council offices, a new library and 226 new homes for their new housing company called Broadway Living.  The only way Vistry can do all this and make a profit for themselves is by cramming 477 homes onto this small site in the shape of a 26-storey tower block that will tower over the low-rise homes to the north and the Grade II listed Town Hall. 

 Historic England has criticised the plans very strongly. They say they will destroy the character of the Victorian Conservation Areas and spoil views from Walpole Park.

 The developers have held several ‘consultation’ events but they’ve changed nothing at all in their plans. Ealing Council holds all the powers it needs to wave the scheme through. What they are doing is wrong and we plan to fight them all the way. You can see the application and  lodge an objection, if you follow the link on  Ealing Council's website HERE

 
We have prepared a list of 10 reasons to object and you can see the full details of the redevelopment and how to object  HERE–

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UPDATED 17th January 2020: Crossrail and Ealing Broadway Station - latest information




MORE ON THE VICTORIA HALL PROPOSALS
UPDATED 12th December 2019: A new group "Friends of Victoria Hall" has been set up to fight the proposals to sell off the hall to Mastcraft as part of their planned conversion to an Hotel and remove some public access.

You can visit theFrioends site at  Save Ealing's Victoria Hall
Where you will find all the latest news at https://savethevictoriahall.weebly.com/in-the-news.html

Most importantly, the news site gives full details of Ealing's consultation that allows you to object to this scheme. The council consultation closes on Monday 6th January 2020 so THERE IS NO TIME TO BE LOST! You can find details at The Ealing Council site.

Also the Friends have set up a petition to be presented at the same time and it is open for your comments and objections. Please visit the 38 degrees petition site as soon as possible. We need many many signatures!

UPDATED 27th July 2019: Crossrail and Ealing Broadway Station - Ealing Council consultation on redesign of the roadspace outside the station.

The council is at long last consulting on plans to redesign the road space outside Ealing Broadway Station ahead of Crossrail. You can see their proposals at  https://www.ealing.gov.uk/ebstation  You should read the consultation  "DRAFT" paper first and there is also a flyer available with an artists impression of what the site could look like with the new minimalist canopy.   Exactly what is proposed is not very clear but the key features include:-

UPDATED 18th March 2019: Crossrail and Ealing Broadway Station - latest information

The Crossrail delays continue. Crossrail Ltd. still aren’t able to predict a new planned opening date for the central London section of the service but have confirmed that it won't now open in 2019. The situation in Ealing is even worse as they haven’t yet let a contract to start the station building work. Previous dates of 19^th December and 14^th February have been and gone and all they can say now is “early April”.

The design for the canopy outside Ealing Broadway Station will be different from that shown on their hoardings. The revised design will be simpler and deals with a number of issues with the old one. The illustrations we have seen look broadly acceptable - see HERE . There will have to be a new “Schedule 7” planning submission to cover this change.

Ealing Council have radically changed their previous ideas for the “public realm” outside the station. We have fed back significant concerns with the new proposed design and will see what changes have been made when it shortly comes out for public consultation.

Crossrail were to have introduced a 4 trains per hour stopping service to Heathrow in May 2018. They still don’t have confidence that they can run a reliable service with their new trains and signalling. This new service will now have to wait until December 2019 at the earliest.

MORE and YET MORE ON THE VICTORIA HALL PROPOSALS

UPDATED 4th February 2019: Mastcraft new planning application to Ealing council  
 SEC is surprised that Mastcraft has now made a new planning application to convert the Town Hall into an hotel. This includes demolition of property owned by the Victoria Hall Trust to make room to build the hotel’s 120 rooms. The Victoria Hall will be shrunk through the loss of the easternmost bay and a rose window that is an integral architectural feature is to be relocated. Public access to the hall and several adjacent areas will be restricted.

The consultation on Mastcraft’s planning application runs until Feb 26th. There are over 100 documents in the full application details but the key sections are in the planning statement,  and you may wish to view the relevant design and access statements – Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 and the Built Heritage Impact Assessments – Part 1 and  Part 2.  

Please have a look at them and submit your comments via the website in good time for the 26th February.

Be warned however that these are large documents between 2 and 4Mb each although absolutely FULL of information well worth reading.

SEC lawyers have written a second and more detailed letter to the Charity Commission questioning the Council’s deal to hand over the Victoria Hall to Mastcraft who are commercial hotel developers.
These areas were paid for from public subscription and are owned by a charitable trust. You can see the affected area on these plans The Council has no right to dispose of the Hall without the permission of the Charity Commission and SEC’s lawyers believe that charity rules will not permit the deal to proceed.

You can see some previous information on the Mastcraft plans on our special Town Hall and Victoria Hall archive page HERE.  

UPDATED 4th February 2019: Crossrail and Ealing Broadway Station - latest information

Crossrail delays at Ealing Broadway station continue. Crossrail now doubt that the bridge can carry the supports for the original canopy design, while complications have emerged with the area outside Villiers House which is not in public ownership. This has required a major re-design to the canopy over the front entrance which will have to go back through Ealing Planning – see HERE  for their latest ideas.

We are promised a consultation on these plans together with Ealing’s latest thinking on the public realm in front of the station in the coming weeks. A key question will be disabled car passengers set-down provision.

Ealing today has a very full roundup of latest events HERE published on 24th January.

   
Back in November last year, Crossrail also sent a letter to some local residents explaining what is happening at Ealing Broadway Station and what is due to take place in late December/early January when there are road closures and hence bus diversions whilst they install some heavy machinery.
You can  see the text of their letter HERE

 SEC  notes generally that as spring 2018 turned into summer, then summer into autumn and with winter now here, the long promised improvements to Ealing Broadway station forecourt seem as distant as ever. Crossrail has been in the headlines recently for its cost overruns and other delays but they continue to hold out the prospect that the new Elizabeth Line service will be operational by the end of next year. They admit however, the other improvements at Ealing Broadway Station will be far from complete and their occupation of Haven Green will drag on deep into 2020.  

 Crossrail say that the station is ‘under technical review by Network Rail as part of the contract letting’ (whatever that means). With this in mind we look forward to confirmation that it will be built according to the 2014 approved designs. The forecourt and the space around it are LBE’s responsibility and they promise that once the station itself is agreed they will consult further on these public realm details, probably in the New Year.

 Since it got its green light back in 2008, Crossrail’s works across the Borough as a whole have been quite a shambles. Unlike in the central and eastern sections nobody has taken the lead in planning how it would be implemented and how it can best fit into the existing environment. Promises and deadlines have been broken repeatedly with the buck passing back and forth between TFL, Crossrail and Network Rail, while LBE spectating from the side-lines like the rest of us. When the Elizabeth Line finally opens expect that 4 out of 5 Ealing stations (the exception is Hanwell) will prove poorly designed and interface badly with the neighbourhoods they serve.

 SEC has written to the National Audit Office to suggest that they examine the implementation of Crossrail in Ealing in its recently announced investigation of the overall Crossrail Project 

You can see the full text of this letter  HERE

10th November 2018: Crossrail and Ealing Broadway Station - yet more ongoing delays


Endless Delays. Crossrail eventually admitted at the end of August that the new Elizabeth Line service through central London wouldn’t be able to start until Autumn 2019. However, these delays are nothing compared to what we have experienced on the western surface section of the route, where the scale of the work is much smaller.

The planned design for Ealing Broadway Station was approved in summer 2014. Work near us eventually started in late summer 2015 and the eastern “emergency escape” footbridge was put up a few months later. Work on the platform extensions then continued slowly, but everything else seemed to slow down to a snail’s pace. The same was true for the other west London stations on the Crossrail route. We got the tale from Crossrail Ltd. that this was due to the difficulties of working around an operational railway. However, work well away from the tracks didn’t seem to be going on either.

Some concerned residents in West Ealing prompted BBC London to run an article about the delays in July 2017. This got Crossrail to admit that the contract for work on the station buildings had been canceled because of increasing costs related to extra design work. There was no explanation of why a construction contract had been let before design work had been completed. We were told that a new (cheaper) contract would be in place in December 2017, with the work to start shortly afterwards. This whole process then suffered slippage after slippage. The invitations to tender only went out in October 2017 and to date no new contract appears to be have signed, although there are signs that a contractor may have been chosen.

We were told in late 2017 that temporary contracts would be used to advance some of the work that could only be done during “possessions" of the railway, when no trains would be running. There were plans to replace the staircase to platforms 2 and 3 at Ealing Broadway Station using such temporary contracts at Christmas 2017 and at the early May bank holiday 2018. Both these plans were called off at the last moment when they realised they may not work. Attempt no. 3 at replacing the staircase (using contractor no. 3) is now underway. Passengers now have walk all the way down the platforms and cross over the “emergency escape” footbridge to get at these platforms. It is thought that a new staircase will be installed over the Christmas break.

The introduction of new services hasn’t fared much better on our section of the route. Crossrail were to introduce a 4 trains per hour service to Heathrow Terminal 4 in May 2018 using their new Elizabeth Line trains. They then found that they couldn’t get the signalling to work with them in the tunnels to Heathrow. Two of their new trains per hour now just run to Hayes & Harlington, with 2 of the old (rebadged) Heathrow Connect trains every hour running all the way to Heathrow. It is not clear when the 4 trains per hour service will start, but it won’t be before May 2019 and perhaps not until December 2019.

We await Crossrail’s next failure to deliver on time and on budget.

Ealing Today also have an item from August 2018 suggesting that the opening of the Western Section of Crossrail will be delayed. You can read the item HERE
They also have an item from September 2018 reporting that passengers may be "At risk" from the continuing delays at Ealing Broadway Station and calling for action. That item is also available HERE

Endless Delays. Crossrail announced last July it had terminated Vinci Ltd’s 2013 contract to upgrade West London’s stations and was re-tendering the work. We were assured that with new contracts would be in place by December 2017 and the upgraded stations could still be ready in time for Crossrail’s 2019 full opening as the Elizabeth Line. We now learn the re-tendering exercise was delayed and with new contracts unlikely before late spring, work won’t start till summer at the earliest. Whether it can end by Crossrail’s December 2019 deadline looks increasingly doubtful.

Still too many steps. Unperturbed, TfL published a series of maps in January of the different stages the Elizabeth Line would open. These showed that by the time Crossrail’s Heathrow service began in May 2018 all West London’s stations would have step free access from street to platform. The announcement triggered a wave of complaints to TfL. No West London station is step free, and the delays mean none will be soon. At the last count, you had to negotiate up to 48 steps to get from the street to the platform at Ealing Broadway. TfL has since quietly amended its maps.

Carillion steps in and then out.  With concern growing about its lack of progress, Crossrail tried a new way to get things at Ealing Broadway moving. It rushed through some temporary contracts for work over Christmas 2017 on the stairs and the lift foundations. Unfortunately, the contract went to Carillion who, even before they went bust, found they couldn’t do the job. Crossrail say they have an arrangement with Carillion’s staff and/or administrators to persevere with this project.

Undersized Lifts. Last autumn, Crossrail submitted to LBE a revised “Schedule 7” planning application, little different to the one 3 years earlier. There were a few welcome changes but no increase in the much criticised undersized lifts. Crossrail claimed the platform 2&3 lift was bigger to handle the expected passengers, but the drawings show it’s the same size as previously. What is new is the lift entry/exit arrangement. This had been a “straight through” design with passengers exiting at the end opposite the entrance. This separate exit has unaccountably disappeared. The effective capacity of the lift has been reduced and those with wheelchairs, buggies and bikes will have either to back in or back out. The plans have been passed.

Heathrow Hassles. Crossrail plans to replace the twice hourly Heathrow Connect service this May with new trains running every 15 minutes. Here too it has snags. Too few new trains have been built yet those they have still lack the software for Heathrow’s signalling system and can only get to Hayes and Harlington. With insufficient existing Heathrow Connect trains for a 4 per hour service, the present 2 trains per hour Heathrow Connect service is likely to run a while longer. Perhaps Crossrail will resort to a paint job on the existing trains to hide its embarrassment? 

At least the job pays well.  But never mind the naysayers and other odd cracks now starting to show eg in  The Evening Standard. Things remain upbeat in Crossrail’s corporate world. The PR department runs at full swing, pushing out positive messages whenever they can. Staff are also doing quite nicely with their pay at the top end of the scale for public bodies. Just look at pages 92 and 93 of the TfL annual report and statement of accounts 2016-2017. Nice work if you can get it.

Progress on Crossrail in Ealing is seriously delayed. In 2011 TFL, the London Borough of Ealing and our then MP Angie Bray  announced to great fanfare that lifts and other work at Ealing Broadway Station needed for Crossrail would be brought forward because the station was already seriously overcrowded. The announcement turns out to have been completely untrue. Work has not just not been done early, it is slipping backwards. 

SEC is campaigning with others to find out what has gone wrong. But the authorities give little away.

SEC has therefore recently written to Val Shawcross, Transport Supremo at City Hall, pointing out that works at Ealing Broadway Station are falling well behind the previously published completion dates and are now scheduled for completion as late as May 2018.
They also point out that, despite Haven Green having been despoiled now for over 18months, there seems to have been little work completed apart from the new passenger bridge at the far end of the platform.
SEC awaits her response!

As regards Crossrail itself, about 80% of the overall work is complete and you can see a lot on their website at http://www.crossrail.co.uk/
and some updates from an Ealing point of view on our Crossrail page HERE