Ealing Council’s Planning Department plummets to a new low as it rolls over to John Lewis
For those of you who aren’t aware, John Lewis are appealing to the Planning Inspector to get permission to build their huge development on the current West Ealing Waitrose site.
Shockingly, Ealing council is not bothering to object to this! So yet again it is down to local residents to do the job that our council should be doing.
Stop the Towers has been given Rule 6 status which means we have permission to appear at the inquiry. So as a matter of urgency we need to raise funds for legal advice and representation for the forthcoming appeal currently scheduled to take place in November.
John Lewis Partnership (JLP) have gone to appeal after they filed for non-determination of their planning application
Why has this happened?
JLP submitted plans back in August 2023 to demolish their 19-year-old supermarket on Alexander Road W13 and replace it with 428 flats in 4 tower blocks rising up to 20 storeys.
The negotiations between Ealing Council & JLP took so long going back and forth with the Council saying they wanted a larger percentage of affordable housing, so JLP decided to file for a non determination due to a time lapse on those proceedings.
As a rule, Ealing Council expects a minimum of 35% of affordable homes from all developers. The GLA are pushing for 50%. But the alleged ‘family friendly’ retail giant only felt like offering a maximum of 19% affordable claiming the scheme would no longer be viable if they went any higher. (They are failing to reveal their profit projection from rents over a 5-10 year period!)
Has a council ever decided not to contest before?
Nobody in the Ealing planning community has ever heard of this happening before.
What does this mean?
It means that Ealing Council won’t be defending the case against them. Instead, they will let the Planning Inspector decide the outcome of the John Lewis Waitrose application, thus removing themselves of all responsibility if the controversial scheme gets the go ahead.
What is a non determination?
Planning authorities have the power to decide on (or determine) developments in their area but, after an application has been made, there are time limits for them to do so. If an authority misses the deadline, developers have the right to appeal to the planning inspectorate to make the decision for them as a case of ‘non-determination’. This is what has happened here in Ealing.
How did this happen?
STT knows that pre-planning application meetings were taking place with JLP for years, but despite repeated requests for copies of these pre-application meetings, no records of these discussions have yet been released. The platinum award winning planning department advise developers on what is acceptable and what is expected – so one of two things have happened here:
1: JLP pretended to Ealing Council that they would deliver a minimum of 35% affordable and then sprung the 19% offer on them when they submitted their planning application which is why leader Peter Mason posted all over Twitter about how his council would never accept such a proposal.
OR
2: Ealing Council knew all along that the retail giant never intended to go higher than 19% and Peter Mason’s tweets were, well, just tweets that meant nothing – very much like his pre-election promises of clamping down on tall towers, a tall-building policy, the loud drum he was apparently banging to let developers know they were not going to run roughshod across the borough and letting residents think they were in the driving seat about the future of their borough. As well as totally ignoring his own emerging Local Plan. But due to the outrage of the public comments and the uproar against the plans, the council were pressured into insisting JLP increased their offering, knowing that they probably never would.
Hopefully the STT legal team will find out exactly what was said in those pre application meetings IF the Council send STT all the relevant paperwork. This should be publicly available, but the documents have not been published. STT has urgently requested them for the up-coming appeal but despite numerous requests and promises from Cllr Shital Manro, as yet, none of the requested files have been sent.
With thanks for all your support.
Stop The Towers