Referendum will be on local plan created outside the council

( image courtesy Roger Green)

The campaign is stepping up for residents who live in the central Ealing area to vote directly on a plan created by local people and not by the Council planners.

It’s the first neighbourhood plan in London for a business area, and only the second in the whole country. If approved in the referendum being held on October 12th next week, it will be incorporated in the local statutory plan and used to help decide on planning applications for development in the area. 

The Central Ealing Neighbourhood Plan (CENP) has been put together by the local Neighbourhood Forum. Its team has a wide range of people involved in different aspects of Ealing life. As well as residents and others who work here, it includes self-employed businessmen, directors of Make It Ealing, members of the Civic Society, voluntary organisations, arts bodies and representatives of the University of West London and Ealing & West London College.

Forum Chair Tony Miller said: “Our policies aim to ensure that development builds on the features which made Ealing the ‘Queen of the Suburbs’ - its green and open spaces, the special character of its buildings and their human scale, and its history of arts and culture. In preserving what is best and offering a range of shopping and other attractions, the town centre can compete on its own terms with the newer, soulless retail parks.”

The Forum wants the plan to receive strong and unequivocal backing in the referendum, so that its aim to make Ealing a vibrant and prosperous regional centre can be realised. It says that the larger the vote in support, the greater the impact the plan can have on future development in the town centre. To achieve this, it has appealed to everyone to cast a ‘YES’ vote on Thursday.

Read more about the referendum here

5th October 2017