Dickens Yard

1st SEC Formal Letter of Complaint to Ealing Council, June 3rd

On Tuesday 3 June, Save Ealing's Centre submitted a letter of formal complaint to the Chief Executive of Ealing Council, Darra Singh, about the lack of due process in the planning procedures relating to the proposed Dickens Yard development and, in particular, to the changes in the planning brief which took place after consultation with the community in 2004. 

Ealing Council prepared a comprehensive development brief for the future of the Dickens Yard site in 2004 after extensive consultation with the community. Ealing Council's Cabinet approved the brief in June 2004 "for the purposes of development control" and for use as "the basis on which to market this development site". Ealing Council has at no stage withdrawn or amended this agreed brief.

However, in its more recent dealings with St George - the preferred developer for the Dickens Yard site - Ealing Council appears to have set aside the agreed site brief and negotiated a much larger scheme, involving considerably more intensive use of the site. The differences between the original brief and the current planning application are given in detail in our Press Release 04 in Press Releases Dickens Yd.  

This vastly inflated scheme, which bears no resemblance to the scheme originally agreed in 2004, was approved by Ealing Council's Cabinet in December 2007.  Save Ealing's Centre believes that the radical change in the proposals for the use and development of the Dickens Yard site is a breach of HM Government's Planning Policy Statement 1 (PPS1) which sets out the Government's overarching planning policies on the delivery of sustainable development through the planning system.

In particular, Save Ealing's Centre believes that Ealing Council has ignored the advice in PPS1 that "Community involvement in planning should not be a reactive tick-box process. It should enable the community to say what sort of place they want to live in at a stage when this can make a difference." 

Read the SEC formal Letter of Complaint in full.

2nd SEC Letter of Complaint to Ealing Council, June 25th

On Wednesday 25th June, Save Ealing's Centre submitted a letter of formal complaint to the Chief Executive of Ealing Council, Darra Singh, about the inconsistencies in the availability and access to the Dickens Yard Planning Application. It has been noted that the quantity and quality of information about the Planning Application available online, on paper and on CD varies therefore SEC cannot be sure which version of the truth to follow.

 Read the SEC formal Letter of Complaint in full.