Are Ealing’s Town Teams an Adequate Replacement for Area Forums?

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Eric Leach looks at how engagement with residents has changed

Ealing Council has held a series of engagement meetings with residents

May 14, 2025

I first arrived in Ealing in 1967 and I’ve variously lived in Acton, West Ealing and Hanwell.

20 years ago, you could attend an Ealing Council Area Committee meeting and find out what the Council was doing and planning to do in your area. At these Area Committees there were pre-meeting agendas and you could even ask questions. And meeting Minutes were prepared and published.

Ward Forums replaced Area Committees in Ealing in 2008. They were tightly controlled events with the Police or some Council Officer presenting slides. Residents’ questions were often for a short time only at the very end of the forums. Even these were killed off by the Council in 2020. Covid during 2020 to 2022 ruled out any public meetings. But since 2022 Ealing Council has not run any regular area/Ward public meetings for residents.

Council efforts in the ‘meet the residents arena’ re-started in 2024 with a low key, flawed public consultation. I am led to understand that some residents were given a limited list of ‘concerns’ to rank. The top concern (chosen from the list supplied) turned out to be ‘Feeling Safe’. It seems fewer than 500 residents responded which is a small sample given there are well over 300,000 adults in the borough of Ealing.

Sometime during 2024 the label ‘Your Town Your Voice ‘(YTYV) was attached to this ‘discovery’ initiative. £480,000 is to be spent by Ealing Council on YTYV. During February and on 1 March 2025 events were held in each of the seven Ealing towns – Acton, Ealing, Greenford, Hanwell, Northolt, Perivale and Southall. In two of them the single ‘workshop’ topics was ‘Feeling Safe’. In the other five it was ‘Clean and Pleasant Area’. It’s not clear who was actually invited to attend these events. Attendees had to pre-register.

Apparently what will grow out of these poorly attended workshops are ’Town Teams’.

Another stream of residents’ workshop activities concerns the future of transport in each of the seven towns. I found out via a friend that an Ealing Council workshop on ‘Shaping the Future of Transport in Ealing - Hanwell’ was taking place at Hanwell Community Centre on 25 February 2025. I duly registered via Eventbrite to attend. I have been a Hanwell resident for over 13 years. I spent some time preparing what I was going to ask. Imagine my amazement when I entered the room at the start time of 6pm to find no other workshop attendees – except two ladies from Project Centre who organised the event. I was angry at my time being wasted and left quite soon later. What is Ealing Council doing by wasting our money is this way?

All this might be amusing if it wasn’t so serious.

I have made three attempts to apply to join the ‘Hanwell Town Team’. Each time I received no written acknowledgement of my application being accepted.

Peter George, Ealing Council’s Strategic Director for Economy and Sustainability stated on 28 October 2024 that a new developer tax would be introduced in Ealing in Spring 2025. This tax - the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) - would generate, he said, some £60 million of Council revenue during 2025 – 2039. By law, residents of a Ward will have a say on how 10-15% of this revenue is spent. This sum of between £6 – 9million is a non-trivial amount. Surely the YTYV initiative and/or the putative ‘Town Teams’ as currently constituted can’t determine how the money is spent?

Couldn’t the Council have hired an established, reputable community research organisation to independently determine residents’ views on spending the money? Even nearer home the Council could have funded ‘Ealing Matters’ to carry out the research. After all its alliance of 70+ residents’ and community groups offers the largest collective, maintained database of concerned Ealing residents.

Eric Leach

Mr Leach retired in 2004 after 38 years in the computer business. He now scrutinises all major planning applications in Ealing for West Ealing Neighbours. In 2016 Ihe was appointed a Government Neighbourhood Planning Champion and from 2013-18 he created and chaired the Government designated West Ealing Centre Neighbourhood Forum which produced the West Ealing Centre Neighbourhood Plan. In the upcoming Government Examination of Ealing Council’s New Local Plan 2024 – 2039 he will be participating querying on the lack infrastructure capacity planning.

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