Forum Topic

decline of Ealing

The claim that Ealing is the garden suburb is sadly no longer true. Ealing is now the neglected suburbTrees have not been pruned or trimmed it seems for years; drains have not been cleared causing large amounts of water to puddle at various points in the borough;  and why are white lines not being repainted? -  Funding for the yellow lines was found - call me cynical is this because they provide revenue?  I seem to remember that a previous Councillor claimed that the lack of white lines down the middle of the road was a traffic calming  measure! If so this has totally failed.  Instigating 20pmh throughout the borough is an estimable aim but failure to enforce this turns local roads into racetracks.  Definitely not 20mph,  or even 30 mph but more like 40+ mph. In the interests of safety is it time to install some speed cameras?  I assume revenue from the closure of Fishers Lane has dwindled to almost nothing  and this would have a double benefit - increase safety and also boost the Council's coffers 

jill morris ● 444d47 Comments

That’s an interesting take on things, James Putland.Of course things change, but change doesn’t always equate to progress. What’s obvious is that Ealing has long been a desirable place to live but perhaps that desirability is being diluted by some of the decisions being taken on our behalf. There’s enough evidence to suggest that a great many people aren’t very happy with the huge tower blocks being sling up across the borough. Perhaps the ‘narrow minded people’ you mention are representative of a wider feeling?I don’t know how closely you follow local politics, if at all, but a lot of what has happened, and continues to happen, isn’t being done with the agreement or participation of the majority of residents. It’s not unfair to expect people who already live in an area to have their opinions listened to, is it?

Simon Hayes ● 394d

Well said. Ealing is a great place to live. Excellent schools, shops, public transport routes, restaurants, parks etc etc. There is a little group of narrow minded people on this board who post negativity on every board, and who nothing but complain about how great it used to be and how bad it is now. Ealing is a desirable place to live - a free market demonstrates that through house prices. Progress and evolution are tough for some to stomach; they would rather things stayed the same forever which is not the real world. Sometimes you have to celebrate the good things by opening your eyes and seeing them; otherwise you just become twisted and sour like some on here.

James Putland ● 395d

A 'lovely view' cannot replace being able to be part of that 'lovely view'In the 'dreaded socialist states' where rabbit hutch urban living was also advocated by planners and politicians.But with one very significant difference. For every level build over 4 storeys, an allotment space must be allocated.And not just a piddly space but the equivalent of a 4 double pole plot which must be less than 2km from the flat location.Here there will end up being virtually no personal outdoor space for anyone.At least houses with gardens addresses that. But for flats a Gym and a view.  Hardly life fulfilling. and not even a car parking space to escape from it all or make a living outside of the conditioned expectations.

Raymond Havelock ● 395d

You can prove anything with facts Philippa. This isn't the place for them

Jeremy Harcup ● 396d

I am not aware of any three bedroom "homes" in any of these Towers, and when there is, they are usually the Penthouse/s.A Tower is hardly a decent environment to raise children anyway?

Rosco White ● 422d

There are apartments Andrew and there are apartments. We are fortunate living in a small block (2x8 flats)built before the rabbit hutch era surrounded by gardens on 3 sides ( 4th side being our garages). Being a small low rise  block we all know each other, do jobs for each other, look out for each other, etc, etc.But what is happening now is very different. Tower blocks despoil the skyline. They are also unlikely to enable residents to get to know each other & live a civilised sociable  existence. They are also of a scale that challenge the facilities and utilities that are already under pressure.

Bettina Margaret Thwaite ● 422d

Yes, the Ministry of Thought to condition the plebiscite to accept the lowest common denominator.I can't wait for the clocks in these two bedroom rabbit hutches (they are NOT family homes by any normal definition) to all strike thirteen at the same time.

N V Brooks ● 423d

There are plenty of these family homes in these apartments that they have been built/building. We can't build houses in London because there is no space to put them, we have to build high density housing of 10 stories. These places are great with gyms/views/low heating bills. It's just about positive reinforcement and thinking differently and putting yourself in that mindset that these are great places to live.  Sometimes people just need a bit of encouragement on how to think differently.

Andrew Boynton ● 423d

"There are plenty of family homes....".Oh Mr Boynton, N V Brooks beat me to it, a CLASSIC Lefty Swerve!As has been asked, WHERE are these numerous Family Homes, particularly the new ones supposedly being built under the benevolent regime of The People's Republic of Ealing?  😆Your subsequent back tracking is noted.  🤣

Rosco White ● 424d

The acid test for any politician is would they like to have to live or do the things they expect other people to. Do you really think any of the local mob would be clamouring to live in a 26, 40 or 55 storey tower if they had a choice? No.What’s overlooked with the ‘housing crisis’ is the fact that much of what is built is beyond the means of those who need it most. Genuinely affordable isn’t the same as the protected low rent that was the standard for council housing. And if you do manage to buy a flat you are often stung with exorbitant service charges that increase year on year.We are already overpopulated in London. The infrastructure can’t cope and not enough has been done to address that.

Simon Hayes ● 424d

Typical Hypocrisy." If I did not have a house then I would love to live in a flat"Just like all those architects and planners and those allied who would not be seen dead in their creations and always choose to move away from 'their area of innovation ' the second their fees are paid - and always live well away.  Often in those places that  "People need to forget about"Well, what's stopping you moving out of your house and getting a flat then?

Raymond Havelock ● 424d

I’m getting weary of hearing about the housing crisis. We haven’t got one. What we have got is a population crisis. The Government I believe admits to roundabout 66 million although in reality they haven’t got a clue.A more credible grip on reality came from our leading supermarkets a few years ago. Analysing their buying & selling figures and turnover they came up with a figure in the mid 80s million. This of course will be more now. So- we have over 20 million people in a black hole, unaccounted for and unprovided for. Then we are upset when our infrastructure starts going south.

Bettina Margaret Thwaite ● 424d

Classic swerve. You stated that the council are building houses then claim the "London is not the place for houses". So, are the council building houses or not?Please answer the question to support 6oue initial claim.

N V Brooks ● 425d

London isn’t really the place for houses, we don’t have the land so it means high density flats need to be built. We just need to embrace the change, if I didn’t live in a house I would love to live in a flat.

Andrew Boynton ● 425d

Shortage of housing is not the problem, but overpopulation is. Where will the doctors' surgeries, schools, dentists be located to serve the occupants of Ealing's nouveau slums?

Tony Heath ● 425d

Before sir you become an object of total ridicule can you please list where the council are building these "plentry of family homes"?Thank you

N V Brooks ● 425d

Bang on Mr Havelock........

Rosco White ● 425d

You must be joking.Try living in a small flat with or without a family.  I have.Worst part of out lives. Stairs. Endless waits for lifts, no open space. zero private open space and no means of expanding. Terrible smells from cooking floors below, Noise that echoes around the whole place. No sense of community or belonging whatsoever.And that was a so called 'luxury development'It's a thing for a very short time in life. Except most don't ever get to get out.It's too many people. And that continues to go completely unaddressed.

Raymond Havelock ● 425d

There  are plenty of family homes there are lots of flats available, we are very lucky that the council and developers are building these for us and we should be grateful as there are some places that do not have them. A flat is the same as a house just without a garden and parking. It has exactly the same function.

Andrew Boynton ● 426d

Where are the FAMILY homes Mr Boynton?You know, those things with, heaven forbid, a GARDEN?We have more than enough rabbit hutches in Ealing.

Rosco White ● 426d

All the flats are fantastic we are in a housing crisis and need them. The issue of GPS is something that affects the whole country and the government is to blame. The Labour Party is Tory lite with Keir Starmer. But we are getting a fantastic new state of the art swimming pool with some lovely flats. I think Greenford could also do with a big bulldozer along the high street. It’s tired with lots of shops selling plastic chairs and pots/pans. Area needs to be completley gentrified.

Andrew Boynton ● 426d

I haven’t used the Elizabeth Line yet Peter and with my migratory arthritis sounds as though I never will. I don’t use a wheelchair but struggle to see how those who do are supposed to access the station. What clown designed this.

Bettina Margaret Thwaite ● 426d

Works outside the station should have ended by December. Hello clowns it's March now. Tfl and the PRE=unmitigated disaster.I have to stretch to climb into an Eliz line train, the poor souls who can't do that should be banging on the door of Network Rail and tfl

Peter King ● 431d

None of which has anything to do with the council. Indeed the only Elizabeth line station with which they were involved directly in the design, Ealing Broadway, is an absolute disaster for disabled travellers, anybody involved in the final stages of that should hang their heads in shame.

N V Brooks ● 432d

Pitshanger Lane is due to be transformed in the near future into Flat Land.Kenmore Mansions to have an extra storey with possibly 22 extra flats. A mooted development above the Ealing Pharmacy. A block of flats at the junction of Pitshanger Lane & Mt. Pleasant Road. To say nothing of number 1 P..Lane with its 60 flats taking up to 4 bedrooms. Then we have Gurnell with potentially 600 flats. Perhaps your correspondent who thinks all this development is so wonderful would like to explain how the E2/E9 bus service is supposed to cope. Ditto the utility supplies, the GP surgeries, Ealing hospital, the schools, etc. I say nothing of the change of environment from a pleasant neighbourhood where most of us knew most of us to an impersonal squash.I realise P.Lane is not the only district due to be despoiled. I merely quote it as I know it living there. I’m just grateful that thanks to my age by the time it is all done I shall be gone or past caring.

Bettina Margaret Thwaite ● 432d

The schools are okay but are exam factories which doesn’t suit every student there.The Elizabeth Line stations are open, yes, and West Ealing is now the focus of intense overdevelopment, much to the upset of the residents who’ve lived there for years. Ealing Council has been complicit in this tower building frenzy, what with failing to produce Authority Monitoring Reports for five years (despite being a legal requirement). That let in the Manor Road developers to successfully appeal against refusal of planning permission for its big tower by the station. An appeal where the substantial costs were met by the Ealing taxpayer.There’s more to come in due course.

Simon Hayes ● 432d

Andrew you're spot on.Name a borough that has just opened 3 Elizabeth Line Stations, at least two 2ndary schools (Ealing Fields & Ada Lovelace) and has Piccadilly Line Stations en route to Heathrow coming out of its ears.If you're not happy here, may I suggest to move to a stunning Borough like Brent

Simon Wycombe ● 432d

10% council tax rise in Slough, 15% council tax rise in Croydon and services being cut back to virtually nothing.

N V Brooks ● 432d

I'll take your word for it ......... 👍  😆

Rosco White ● 432d

Slough, Northamptonshire and Croydon are most definitely worse in terms of financial mismanagement Oxford are just appalling in terms of not listening to local residents.

N V Brooks ● 432d

Ealing Council Labour are undoubtedly systematically destroying the soul of "The Queen of the Suburbs." They simply do not care, they're just common vandals intent on "Levelling Down."I absolutely loathe politics at Council level and Ealing Council Labour are the absolute WORST example of the genre.  (OK, Liverpool is possibly worse....😆)

Rosco White ● 432d

It must be difficult to read even selectively with blinkers thatobscure one's vision so badly.

N V Brooks ● 432d

Wow, that’s a selective reading of what’s going on.

Simon Hayes ● 432d

There’s a new state of the art swimming pool being built, world leading underground opened elizabeth line, council houses being replaced in high lane estate. Ultra low emission zone removing dirty air. The transformation of west Ealing with the Waitrose redevelopment.

Andrew Boynton ● 433d

Control. Covid cobblers, ltns????Now certain foodsCashless (trying to)Be alarmed but fight back. Loudly

Peter Yale ● 434d

Yes, Philippa, that’s pretty much what I’ve said, although there’s a disingenuous line in there about car journeys ‘taking a bit longer’. As the LTN fiasco proved they take a lot, lot longer, which is bad for anyone who has to get to work (and before you start there are thousands of people in west London who work much further away than 15 minutes. You might even employ them yourself occasionally.The crucial line in your article is ‘what matters more is the quality and equity of those services‘.Forget all the active travel claptrap, if local services are poor then people wouldn’t choose to use them. But if they are forced to because it’s the only option then that’s discrimination, something the real socialists despise!Paris ploughs 25 percent of its annual budget into local neighbourhoods and crucially the authorities there properly consult with residents to see what they need and want. That doesn’t happen here. Even if we asked for X, Y and Z there’s no guarantee we’d get it. The concept will create as many inequalities as it solves, if not more.Besides, they could build GP surgeries to attend to the medical needs of a rapidly expanding population, but finding the GPs and practice staff to run them is a different matter. Ditto schools.What your article doesn’t address is where the people who work in the shops, services and other facilities actually live and how they get there. The primary school my kids went to had a lot of staff, mostly younger women, who lived way outside Ealing and the only reliable way to get there was to drive. Early starts, late finishes, parent evenings, school productions, etc. And they couldn’t afford to live in Ealing, or simply didn’t want to. Even substantial pay rises wouldn’t make local properties affordable. Any school stands or falls by the quality of its staff, and creating barriers to attracting the best is simply stupid.London is far more complex than an English Market town, and I know quite a few of those and believe me most have their limitation last and downsides that the article fails to address.But London is a multi layered agglomeration where people and things moved about for a whole host of reasons, though the primary one is economic activity. It’s always been thus. You’ll find most people who still travel to work into Town do so by public transport. They call it commuting.

Simon Hayes ● 436d

https://theconversation.com/15-minute-cities-how-to-separate-the-reality-from-the-conspiracy-theory-200111

Philippa Bond ● 436d

That’s the paradox.But they haven’t even been consistent in defining the 15 minute idea. Sometimes it’s 15 minutes by bike, sometimes 15 minutes on foot. I’ve seen definitions where it’s 15 minutes round trip.It’s like the use of ‘essential’ and ‘local’ when discussing journeys. It’s entirely subjective. I like to shop at my local Lidl, because it’s cheaper and better value than my other local supermarkets. But it’s 2.2 miles from my house, so it’s not within 15 minutes for me, except in the car. No direct bus route. Too far to walk or cycle (if I was that way inclined anyway).The whole concept is nonsense.

Simon Hayes ● 436d

"15 min cities just allow you to access the shops and services you need on your doorstep." Well what percentage of the Ealing population need to travel more than 15 minutes to access these facilities? How do you know what percentage of Ealing residents currently have these services within 15 minutes of where they live? That's right, you don't know, because no one has done the analysis to identify it. There's no way one can draw 15 minutes boundaries for everyone, so this will create boundaries where some people will be penalised for accessing services that are within 15 minutes of their home.

Vlod Barchuk ● 436d

Funnily enough, we did used to have 15 minute cities, albeit a long time ago. Corner shops with a wide range such as bakers, butchers, greengrocers and the like. Even Post Offices.Doctors used to do house calls (apparently), while there was a reliable and regular fresh milk delivery.Kids could get into the local schools (to which they invariably walked) because they weren’t massively oversubscribed due to overpopulation from inappropriate development.Of course that all changed when people became more affluent and decided to exercise choice (a democratic fundamental for all you left-leaning types out there). It’s not unreasonable to expect people to want that choice and to be able to access it. It’s one of the reasons Lidl and Aldi are such successes, even though many of the customers don’t live anything like 15 minutes from their nearest store.The fundamental flaw in the whole concept is that massive amounts of money would have to be spent everywhere to get remotely near the aspiration of equality for everyone. That’s never going to happen in a decade of Sundays.What I want to know is can I sue the idiots trying to implement this if everything I need isn’t provided within 15 minutes of my home?

Simon Hayes ● 437d

15 min cities is a piece of Champagne socialist idealism.The assumption is flawed in that many of the 15 min city dwellers cannot afford the  costs of 15 min artisans or shops that pay the premium rates to exist as 15 min services.Which is why it cannot workAnd in this 15 location most of the small businesses and shops are doing driven out for the Latte loving idealists who think shelves can be put up by an app.

Raymond Havelock ● 437d

Pure unadulterated rubbish. If that was the intent then I would require all the medical facilities I use to be within 15 minutes of my home. As powers far greater of far greater vision than those narrow-minded individuals seeking to curtail car used have decided to concentrate many medical facilities in centres of excellences, many of which are miles away and with 300,000 NHS vacancies one must view the 15 minute fallacy as little more than an attempt to pander to those who would love to live on gated private road but was simply not successful enough in their lives to pay for that privilege.

N V Brooks ● 437d

‘15 min cities just allow you to access the shops and services you need on your doorstep. If you think it's more sinister than that, then that's your paranoia.’Fine in theory but unworkable in practice. The infrastructure isn’t being put in to support the existing population, let alone the projected increase in numbers.The popular myth put out is that everyone is driving all the time to buy a pint of milk. That’s simply not true.

Simon Hayes ● 437d

"15 min cities just allow you to access the shops and services you need on your doorstep", it seems as decreed by a disingenuous virtue signalling/paternal neo-feudal top dog in higher authority. Kevin Wilson, I do not drive myself, but I do not want to live in some paternal neo-feudal society that was common in the post war Soviet Empire of Hitler's one time ally in the Moscow Kremlin (ref. 23/08/1939, the Ribbentrop Molotov Pact). After 1945, it ruled in Central Europe until about 1990. I visited the then East Germany and also Poland, where I have some family. Based on what I saw, I would not like to be confined to a 15 min city, just to satisfy the ego of some paternal neo-feudal top dog virtue signalling authoritarian. I would just like a bit more freedom to move about myself, beyond what someone else wants to dictate down to me or others. That is not paranoia.

Anthony Hawran ● 437d

15 min cities just allow you to access the shops and services you need on your doorstep. If you think it's more sinister than that, then that's your paranoia.

Kevin Wilson ● 437d

Money comes from Central Govt (or rather doesn't).  Though when it does come it tends to be ring fenced by Central Govt for particular projects.If you want the white lines repainted and I desperately want the zebra crossings made far more visible then you need to lobby where the grants come from.  Since the idea is that we should keep ourselves fitter by walking and cycling more perhaps a place to start is the Secretary of State for Transport The Rt Hon Mark Harper MP(see https://www.gov.uk/government/news/200-million-to-improve-walking-and-cycling-routes-and-boost-local-economies) and the Mayor's Walking & Cycling Commissioner:  Will Norman who can be contacted through the Mayor of London's website. 

Philippa Bond ● 442d

Ealing, as with Hounslow Borough is more than in decline, it’s finished. They , the wonderful powers that be- who were voted in, but not by me, do as they please.15 minute city’s, wt……Anti car zealots.Get in the real world.Thankyou & Mr R White I respect & suspect you may agree in part ❤️😀👍

Peter Yale ● 442d