Decision Day Looms for Historic Victoria Hall

Hearing to decide if building can be included in Town Hall sale

Fenced-off side entrance to the Victoria Hall which along with Ealing Town Hall has been closed since September 2023.. Picture: Roger Green

November 20, 2025

The latest hearing over the fate of Ealing’s Victoria Hall, when a judge considered an appeal brought by two local residents on behalf of the Friends of the Victoria Hall (FoVH) took place this week.

The tribunal met on Wednesday 19 November to consider their bid to challenge Charity Commission’s decision to permit Ealing Council to include the Hall in a wider sale of the Town Hall site.

The public proceedings finished at 1pm following representations made on behalf of the two respondents, the Charity Commission, and Ealing Council. Judge Worth and the two lay tribunal members then spent the afternoon discussing the appeal.

According to FoVH, the judge said that she would issue a draft decision will be "in the next day or so" with the final ruling released within 14 days.

Built and paid for by donations and managed for more than a century under the Victoria Hall Trust, the Hall has long provided a range of rooms and capacities used by community groups, orchestras, religious events and support services. FoVH argues that the Charity Commission’s revised scheme effectively enables the Council to treat the Hall as part of a commercial redevelopment package rather than preserve it as an affordable, public facility.

Roger Green, chair of FoVH, says the group has “a very strong case” and hopes the tribunal can pave the way for the Hall to return to public use. He points to recent examples of the need for a central meeting space: he says that the council itself recently refused entry to people attending a workshop to develop a Community‑led Regeneration Charter because it lacked a room large enough to accommodate everyone.

In 2014 Ealing Council marketed an opportunity to refurbish Ealing Town Hall and included the Victoria Hall within that site. Two years later the Council granted a 250‑year lease to a developer intending to convert the Town Hall complex, including parts of the Victoria Hall, into a luxury hotel with a wellness spa. FoVH’s complaint rests on the point that the Victoria Hall was a separate gift to the public and the property of the Victoria Hall Trust; the charity’s governing Scheme, they say, cannot be varied merely to enable a commercial disposal.

When the issue was first raised in 2017 the Council applied to the Charity Commission to alter the Trust’s Scheme so the Hall could be transferred into the redevelopment. Public opposition coalesced into the Friends of the Victoria Hall in 2019, a coalition of local community groups determined to defend the Hall’s charitable purpose. Since then, the campaign has engaged in sustained legal action; FoVH has raised more than £125,000 to meet the costs of challenging the Commission and the Council.

FoVH scored a notable victory in September 2023 when the court quashed the Charity Commission’s first revised scheme on grounds that it failed adequately to protect the charity’s interests. A subsequent version of the Scheme published in September 2024 did not, in the Friends’ view, offer sufficient safeguards, and it is that revised Scheme which is now the subject of the appeal this week.