The Gurnell application was rejected at Planning Committee on 17 March 2021. On 17 May, the Mayor of London reviewed the application and decided to not intervene with the decision. This means the plans will not go ahead. Visit our ''Latest update'' page for more details. London Borough of Ealing were planning to demolish the current Gurnell Leisure Centre, replace it with a new one and build 599 homes in 6 tower blocks up to 17 storeys high on Metropolitan Open Land with only 16% genuinely affordable housing. This could equate to around 1,800 people living in the development.
The council claim that they do not have sufficient funds to pay for a new leisure centre so they will be selling off the land and allowing a private developer to build on the site in return for a yet undisclosed fee. Since 2019, Ealing council have been very secretive about the finances of the leisure centre. In a recent ward forum, Cllr Mahfouz suggested the new leisure centre could cost around £40 million. We now have confirmation that the leisure centre would cost a staggering £54.89M (the leisure centre would cost £28.89M with the associated basement costing a further £26M.) It's also important to recognise that the proposed leisure centre is almost the same specification of our current one. Visit our The Plans page for more details. The local residents support the need for the leisure centre to be either refurbished or redeveloped and recognise that there is a cost associated with this. They are also supportive of the provision of genuinely affordable housing, and sustainable progressive developments. However, several concerns have been raised about this development, so this group has been formed to represent the local people.