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Updates

15 Nov 2021 - No updates from Ealing Council

It's all been very quiet, with no update from the Leader of the Council, Cllr Peter Mason or the Portfolio holder for "Good Growth" Cllr Shital Manro.

An update on Gurnell was requested at the Full Council meeting in early November, however the response was that they are still considering the issue and that they would be in a position to update in the new year.

We feel this simply isn't good enough and will be following up directly with Cllr Mason and Manro. It's been 21 months since Gurnell closed and 8 months since the planning application was rejected - the Council need to start consulting with the community rather than progressing behind closed doors.

9 Sept 2021 - Save Gurnell meet with Ealing Council Leader Peter Mason in June

In June, we met with new council leader Cllr Peter Mason and newly appointed cabinet member for “Good Growth” Cllr Shital Manro.

The key messages from the meeting

No decisions about the long-term future of Gurnell will be made this year, however work will progress to look at the options.
There are a range of options being considered, from demolition and reverting the site to parkland, through to repeating a similar exercise that was conducted with EcoWorld with an enabling development that would “have the confidence of the planning committee to be passed.”
The public will be consulted, and Cllr Mason is keen to “engage, design, co-design and co-create.”
£12.5M remains ring-fenced for the project.
Labour will include Gurnell in their 2022 manifesto, promising to deliver a “modern, 21st century cost self-sufficient leisure centre.’’ This will be the third time that Gurnell has been included in the Labour manifesto, 2014 was to refurbish/renew the centre and 2018 to rebuild it.

Our key takeaways from the meeting were:

We are concerned that the range of options still includes the potential for building housing on protected Metropolitan Open Land (MOL), given this was the key reason for refusal.
There has been a promise of better consultation with the public, however actions will speak louder than words.

Cllr Mason made an official statement about Gurnell on 23rd July, click here to watch the video. The statement mentions a sum of £18M to refurbish the leisure centre.

This sparked another news story as it came to light that there is another refurbishment option costing £4-5M. Exact details of both options have not been publicised and we have requested further details.

Row breaks out over popular Ealing swimming pool in need of £18m repairs

18 May 2021 - Gurnell Stage 2 Application decision by the Mayor of London

The Mayor has now reviewed the Gurnell application (Stage 2) and he will not be intervening in the decision.

Therefore the decision by the Planning Committee stands and the application is refused. The formal decision notice will be issued in due course.

CAN THIS BE APPEALED?

Yes. The applicant has 6 months to appeal the decision from the date of the decision notice.

In this case the applicant is Be:Here Ealing, a joint venture between Ealing Council, EcoWorld International and Broadway Living. So technically the council would be appealing their own decision, this would be unusual but it could happen.

18 March 2021 - Ealing Planning Committee results and what happens next

The planning committee refused the application in a vote of 10 against, 1 for and 2 abstentions.
The key reasons for the refusal were:

Inappropriate development on Metropolitan Open Land (MOL) with no very special circumstances to allow it to proceed.
Development was too big, tall, dense, and poorly designed.
Not enough affordable housing and not tenure blind.
Financial viability

What happens next?
The standard process is for Ealing to send this to the Mayor of London for his “Stage 2” response. Save Gurnell feel it would be very unlikely for the Mayor to intervene in the decision - the vote against was so strong as were the reasons for refusal.

Could they come back with a new proposal or challenge the decision?
In theory, yes that could happen. However, given the reasons for refusal i.e. not building massive tower blocks on protected land it would be difficult to “tweak” the scheme. Fundamentally, the committee agreed that building on this site could not be justified so coming back with something a bit smaller wouldn’t get around that.

Is the Save Gurnell campaign over?
No! Our next step is to try and get the leisure centre reopened when Covid restrictions are eased. The council’s key argument for keeping it closed last time round was that is was going to be demolished soon – this is no longer the case.

The original plans for the leisure centre were decided back in 2015. A lot has changed since then, and we want to community to be fully engaged by the council with any new plans to refurbish/replace the leisure centre.

26 February 2021 - Gurnell scheduled for 17 March Planning Committee.

We have just found out that Gurnell will be presented on 17 March at the Ealing Council Planning Committee. We will post more details next week along with the link to watch the live meeting online. Please join our mailing list for the latest updates.

13 February 2021 - General update and summary of key points raised by statutory consultees.

We still do not have a date when Gurnell will go to the Planning Committee for a decision.

The case officer has not been forthcoming with any details despite our multiple requests. In addition to this, we noticed that statutory consultee comments had not been made public. We asked for these through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, which Ealing did not fulfil. We escalated to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) who decided that Ealing had breached the Regulation. The ICO gave Ealing 35 days to comply before certifying the breach to the High Court. Ealing finally published the documents on the planning portal and has backdated them.

This following section summaries some of the statutory consultee responses. There were several more however we are summarising the key points. If you wish to look at the actual responses or get more details, please visit the Gurnell application in the Ealing Planning Portal. The responses are in the document section.

Historic England

Historic England did not comment about impact to heritage assets however they were concerned about archaeological interests. They have requested a pre-commencement planning condition which says that no development shall take place until an archaeological investigation can be completed.

Thames Water

Thames Water requested a condition that no properties shall be occupied until all water network upgrades required for such a development have been completed.

Transport for London (TFL)

TFL has not made their formal response yet due to missing information and have requested the following: an active travel assessment, an independent road safety audit, a parking management plan, a re-run of the bus impact analysis and a Construction Logistics Plan. They have also requested certain conditions and contributions to address the various issues created by the development.

National Health Service (NHS)

The NHS requested a capital contribution of £842,660 from the applicant, however details of what that would be used for were not provided.

Environment Agency (EA)

The EA requested a condition for a 10-metre-wide buffer zone alongside the River Brent which shall be free from built development including lighting, domestic gardens, and formal landscaping. This could mean that pathways within that zone and the planned footbridge across the river may not be allowed.

Natural England

Natural England sent two letters to Ealing Council reminding them that it’s their responsibility to assess and determine whether the application is consistent with national and local policies on the natural environment.
They said that the application surveys are out of date and that the council should seek advice from their in-house ecologist or Wildlife Trust. We have not yet seen any evidence of an updated ecological survey or comments from any ecologist.

Sport England

Sport England requested a “Grampian style condition” to ensure the BMX track is replaced before or at a similar time the existing facility is lost. This means that the Gurnell development cannot proceed until the new BMX track is open for use.
It’s also worth noting that in Sport England's second letter, they said ‘’the absence of an objection to this application, cannot be taken as formal support or consent from Sport England.’’ We interpret the tone of their comments and responses as being generally negative towards the proposal which could be a contributing factor to why Ealing didn't secure any grants from them for the new leisure centre.

The BMX track update

The BMX track application 201541FUL (which was submitted as a separate application to Gurnell) was put on hold in July 2020 by request of the London Wildlife Trust due to a large number of issues.
The planning officer for the BMX application has told us the applicant is considering to scale down the original proposal which would be re-submitted as a new application and go through the consultation process again.

Conclusion
Given the nature of the responses by the statutory consultees, alongside the unknown financial nature of the project, we feel that it's highly likely that the Gurnell application may be subject to further delays.

6 December 2020 - Planning Committee delays

The council have confirmed that Gurnell will not be going to the December Planning Committee and that “the application is currently anticipated to go to the Planning Committee in the new year”.

Given it is now nearly 5 months since the end of the consultation period we have asked what is causing the delay but have not yet had a response. We’ll keep chasing for a response and will let you know as soon as we have any further news.

18 September 2020 - Response from the Mayor of London and the cost of the new leisure centre has gone up (again)

On 15 September, the Mayor’s office sent their Stage 1 response to Ealing Council.

The report says the plans do not comply with the London Plan but that ‘’possible remedies could address these deficiencies.’’ The key issues are costs, the phasing and means of re-provision of indoor and outdoor facilities, landscaping, biodiversity, pedestrian and cycle enhancements as well as an agreement on the flood risk strategy. They mentioned that the Environment Agency objected to the application given the absence of an acceptable Flood Risk Assessment and supporting flood model. All of these issues are part of the key argument of whether ''Very Special Circumstances'' exist to allow the council to build tower blocks on MOL.

Other areas where further information was requested was in relation to energy, urban greening and multiple items relating to transport. The full letter and report can be found here.

The new Gurnell Leisure Centre may now cost over £50 Million!

According to the Mayor’s Stage 1 report, it states that ‘’the Council’s independent cost assessment concludes that the leisure centre facility would cost £28.89 million with the associated basement costing a further £26 million. As such, the total cost of the leisure centre related elements in the application exceed £50 million.’’

In January, Cllr Bassam Mahfouz who is sponsoring this project, suggested that the leisure centre would cost around £40 million. In 2016, the project started off with a cost of £30 million (and the specification has been decreasing ever since.)

4 June 2020 - Planning Application update

The planning application for Gurnell is live. Now is the time to make our voice heard - if you oppose this overdevelopment then please submit your objection to the Council. See our ''How to Object'' page for more details.

The council have confirmed that objections submitted up until the date of the Planning Committee will be counted and considered.

29 April 2020 - BMX track has been submitted as a separate application

The Council have allowed the BMX track to be submitted as a separate application even though it's part of the Gurnell development proposal and falls within the project boundary. While we don't know the exact reasons he council have done this, there is significant concern because the proposed location is within a Site of Importance to Nature Conservation (SINC) and will effectively destroy the SINC. We will be objecting to this application because of its impact to the environment and the fact that the Gurnell proposal should be considered as a single application so that the benefits vs harms can be reviewed truthfully.

The BMX track application can be found here.

10 November 2019 - Deal Structure has changed

There has been a SIGNIFICANT change to the deal structure between Ealing Council and the developer (Ecoworld).
Ecoworld are no longer responsible for the leisure centre and affordable housing build– the council must now find another company to deliver these. In summary,

The council have now taken on the responsibility to build the leisure centre and affordable housing. The developer (Ecoworld) will only be responsible for the open market housing (Blocks C,D, E, F). This leaves the Council with the associated risks whereas the developer carried these risks before the deal changed.
Financial information that was previously available has now disappeared - we don’t know how much the Council are receiving for selling off our land or the size of the shortfall that must be met by public funding.
The council had all this information before the last consultation (September 2019) however they decided not to tell us.

When did this happen?

The Gurnell redevelopment was discussed at a Cabinet meeting on 17th September – just 8 days before the consultation meeting on 25th September, however none of this was mentioned to the public.

What’s the impact?

Now that the developer is now longer responsible for the leisure centre and affordable housing build, the council must find another company to deliver these.

The developer was going to pay the council £25.2m for this piece of land but it is now unclear ow much the council are receiving - this information was left out of the September 2019 consultation. Assumption is that the contribution hasdecreased,therefore widening the funding gap over and above the £12.5m already budgeted to cover the £37.7m cost of the new centre.

Council are taking on direct delivery responsibility for the leisure centre build and the associated risk– under the previous deal, the build was fixed cost and the developer carried the risk.

Leisure Centre build cost could increase above the £37.7m estimate and the council have no budget for this - it could be in the millions.

The council will have a dependency on Ecoworld to build the basement across the site and if this is delayed then the leisure centre will be closed for longer than planned.

There is a risk that the council run out of money and reduce the facility mix or specification of the leisure centre.

There is a risk that the leisure centre is demolished and delayed past 3 years or never rebuilt.

Is there anything else we didn’t know?

The council has already spent at least £1.34m on the pre planning activities, £3m has been spent in total but unclear how much over the agreed £1.34m has been incurred.

The council plan to use £10m of GLA grant to fund the affordable housing. Therefore, the 403 residential units being built by the developer do not contribute to this in any way.

This reason this project has been delayed is because the council keep submitting plans that the GLA which they do not approve. In fact, the last proposal did not include any affordable housing and it’s the GLA who have told the council that this must be included – so it’s clear that the council were willing to build 600 residential units with 0% affordable housing.

Despite these changes, the entire proposal will be submitted under one planning application.