Local planning for the town centres of Ealing Broadway and West Ealing has come a step closer, as Ealing Council has backed SEC's wish to start the process and has applied to the Government on our behalf for 'frontrunner' funding for two Neighbourhood Forums to prepare plans for the two areas.

The new Localism Act gives local communities the right to have more say in decisions that affect their neighbourhoods. If they choose, they can set up a 'Neighbourhood Forum' to prepare a Neighbourhood Plan to 'decide where new houses, businesses or shops should go and what they will look like'. Local authorities will have to support their preparation and local people would then vote on the plan.

Neighbourhood Forums should have at least 21 members, be representative of the local community and be open to new members.

Save Ealing's Centre supports these new powers because we think Ealing town centre will be a better place if everyone has a chance to say what it should be like and be involved in improving it. We have proposed to the Council that, together with local business organisations like the Ealing BID Company, we should start work on two separate neighbourhood plans - one for Ealing and one for West Ealing.

Our 'Vision for Ealing' already sets out SEC's ideas about many of the key areas. However the Vision is now rather out of date as we published it over three years ago, and much has changed since. We are therefore in the process of reviewing it. When revised, it will be a major element in helping to decide the future shape of our town centres within the emerging Local Development Framework.



9 December 2011