Court dates have been set for the Friends of Victoria Hall challenging the Charity Commission over their support for the sale of Ealing Town Hall. 

After two years of campaigning, on 13th December a court date was finally set for the case for Friends of Victoria Hall attempting to stop the sale of Ealing Town Hall to private ownership. 

The trial will take place between 20th February and 23rd February 2023. 

Friends of Victoria Hall are attempting to save the Victoria Hall, which constitutes 20% of Ealing Town Hall, and was bought in 1888 via public subscriptions. 

The Victoria Hall and the lower Prince's Hall are both owned by the Victoria Trust, which was formed in 1893 to ensure they were run in the best interests of the public. 

Friends of Victoria Hall argue that the sale into private ownership and created a video to display ways of updating the hall for the needs of Ealing in the modern day. 

They say on their website: "The conversion into a hotel would render the Hall unusable for the large community events that have taken place there for more than a century. 

"With the borough's increasingly diverse population due to grow by 25% over the next 10 years, the Trust's role is as necessary as it has ever been.  

"Loss of the Victoria Hall and its ancillary rooms as places for meetings and gatherings would deprive the Borough of Ealing of a key facility that should be bringing together Ealing's new residents and helping them to integrate with the existing community." 

Ealing Council decided to market the opportunity to refurbish and redevelop Ealing Town Hall in 2014, before agreeing a 250-year lease with Mastcraft to turn most of the Town Hall, and within that the Victoria Hall, into a hotel for a fee of £2,500,551 and an annual rent £250,000. 

The Charity Commission published a draft scheme in 2019 to allow Ealing Council to sell off Ealing Town Hall and the Victoria Hall. 

A month later the Friends of the Victoria Hall started a petition to prevent the sale, which obtained over 2,000 signatures. 

After two years of failing to turn the decision, in 2021 two residents, on behalf of Friends of the Victoria Hall, launched an appeal to the court against the Charity Commission's draft scheme. 

After several delays to the case, the date for the hearing has now finally been set for February next year.