Westel House, soon to be demolished Background 22-24 Uxbridge Road Westel House, 32-38 Uxbridge Road Travelodge, 77 Uxbridge Road Ealing Cross, 79-89 Uxbridge Road 113 Uxbridge Road Commercial development in Ealing, and the office corridor in particular, is a key element in the revitalisation of the town centre. The success or failure of Ealing's Local Development Framework rests heavily on whether the redevelopment plan for the area has correctly identified the future of the stretch that runs along the Uxbridge Road between the Ealing Broadway and West Ealing town centres. Present occupiers of the office market in Ealing effectively fall into two categories:- Those organisations that need to be in Ealing because local people have to visit them or because include Ealing Council, the police service, parts of the NHS, solicitors, the Job Centre and some social housing organisations. All but the NHS have offices in the office corridor. The centre of Ealing is a reasonably good location for these functions as it has the best transport links to other parts of the borough. However, those living in Southall or Northolt have a bit of a trek to get there. Those organisations that could be located elsewhere but choose to be in Ealing. This could be for a variety of reasons, including their founders living locally, cheap and available office space at the time, convenience for both central London and Heathrow, or general attractiveness of the locality. A significant proportion of the office space in Ealing is currently unoccupied. This includes Villiers House and Crystal House in the town centre. In the office corridor, Westel House is completely empty, Ealing Cross is largely unoccupied, and a number of the other blocks have spare space in them. Much of the empty space pre-dates the recession. Although some blocks may have been deliberately left vacant to enable redevelopment plans to come to fruition, this has been a situation for some time and casts a blight on the prosperity of the whole area. The current state of play of developments in the office corridor appears to be as follows:- 22-24 Uxbridge Road This site once contained Ealing Council offices. It was sold off and the offices demolished. A planning application was approved in 2009 for a 165 bed hotel plus data centre/office accommodation. . Work on the site has now started with an expected completion date of March 2012. The hotel will be a Premier Inn and the data centre will be run by Redwire DC. Westel House, 32-38 Uxbridge Road This tallest building in the office corridor has been empty for about the last four years. Designed by Richard Seifert of Centrepoint fame, it had previously been occupied by BT and then by TVU. The owners (Frogmore) propose to knock it down and replace it with two residential blocks and a hotel. Details are available on the developer's web site and in the planning application on the Council's web site. Planning permission was granted at Ealing Council's Planning Committee meeting on 20th April 2011. Travelodge, 77 Uxbridge Road This new hotel opened at the end of March 2011. Ealing Cross, 79-89 Uxbridge Road This comprises 135,000 sq ft of modern office space, only a small part of which is let. This recent development has the disadvantage that it only has visitor and disabled parking. All other office blocks in this area have at least some parking for those staff who find the journey even more difficult by other means. 113 Uxbridge Road A2 Dominium Housing Group have submitted a planning application for this office block. The effect would be to add an extra 2 storeys to the 7 storey building, extend it at the rear and significantly reduce the amount of car parking space. The formal consultation period for the planning application has now ended and a decision is awaited. July 2011