Good and Bad Planning Applications

Site Visits were held today for the Planning Committee next Wednesday, with two of the sites being important for East Acton ward.

First, the Planning Committee visited North Acton Playing Fields, where the Parks and Countryside Service are seeking planning permission to spend £400,000 on a whole scale refurbishment of the currently unused pavilion and changing rooms. The Committee Members were a bit surprised, but pleased, that the concern of local residents who attended was that they should agree without delay – they are more used to residents’ opposing developments. The North Acton Playing Fields have not historically had the same attention as some other parks in the Borough, and therefore both we East Acton Councillors and our Acton Central colleagues have had to be a very organised lobby to get this welcome action from the Council.

I then cadged a lift with the Planning Committee members to their next site – an old railway club and neighbouring cottages and land on Goodhall and Stephenson Streets in ‘the Island Triangle’. You may not have heard of the Island Triangle, but you’ve almost certainly seen it – the northern-style railway cottages in the Conservation Area are regularly used as a backdrop for films, TV and adverts.

Planning Committee Members Cllrs Phyl Greenhead and Tejinder Dhami (right), Planning Officer Aileen Jones (centre), residents, and Island Triangle Residents Association chair John Stack (far left)

Local residents are keen that the club and building should be redeveloped for housing. However, they object (rightly in my view) to the overdevelopment and unsympathetic housing design currently proposed, and to a “fiddle” being tried on by the developers to get around the Council’s affordable housing policy. The developers also own a site in one of the highest house price areas of central Ealing - and are trying to avoid having other than token affordable housing there, by moving their affordable housing requirements entirely to the Island Triangle. This is a pretty cynical move by any standards, and in my view runs directly counter to the Council’s policy of encouraging mixed communities.

We’ve had a number of big planning issues recently in the Island Triangle - unsurprisingly, given that the ‘Island’ reference comes from it being another residential area surrounded by railways and industry. I’ve had the very frustrating experience of twice persuading the Planning Committee to reject inappropriate applications next to houses – a cement works and a waste plant – only to have other decision-making bodies give permission over our heads. We’ll see what happens on Wednesday.