This is an opinion piece written by Acton campaign group, Cap the Towers.

Last Thursday afternoon, Ealing Council announced on its website that it has accepted for consideration the application of the Friary Park developers for the final stage of their development.

It reads: 'Full planning permission for the demolition of all existing structures, site preparation works and the construction of Block C (1-24 storeys), Block D (1-12 storeys) comprising 693 homes.'

As always with these announcements, Ealing Council gives minimal and often misleading information of what is being proposed and it is left to Cap the Towers and other groups to trawl through the thousands of pages of the applicant's documentation in order to provide the public with the essential information.

These three computer generated images are provided by the developer within their application, and far exceed the levels of overdevelopment that Acton residents have been led to expect in the past:

The view from the North

An artist impression of the Friary Park Development from the view of Friary Road as you turn off the A40 (credit: Planning application).

This image, provided by the developers, would be the view from Friary Road as you turn off the A40 approaching Friars Place Green. The proposed buildings are literally twice the size of what the developers initially proposed and were granted in its current planning permission. The tower on the right exceeds the parameter height set by Ealing (see Planning Committee Report 19/10/22, page 17, in Ealing Council records).

The view from the East

An artist impression of the Friary Park Development from the view of Friary Road (credit: Planning application).

This image is from Friars Way which runs from Friary Road beside the development, and then south past Friars Gardens into St Dunstan's Avenue and ultimately to Acton Central Station.

The narrow alley leading into Emanuel Ave is seen on the left. Again, the image shows the size and bulk of this proposed final stage of the development: twice as big as what the developer initially presented and was granted.

It should be noted that this image fails to show all the other towers already constructed which add enormously to the sense of height and bulk over the whole development: towers of 24, 22, 17 and 14 storeys.

The view from the South

An artist impression of the Friary Park Development from Westbourne Avenue (credit: Planning application).

This image is from Westbourne Avenue and illustrates how the height, bulk and architectural style of the evolving Friary Park is totally out of sympathy with the character of the immediate neighbourhood: a suburb of two/three storey Victorian, Edwardian and 1930s housing. Efforts by the developers' photographer to obscure the proposed 24 floor and 15 floor towers behind the tree are largely in vain!

There is one final image from the developers' application documents which all Ealing/Acton residents will want to see and which demonstrates how woefully inadequate, and indeed dishonest, is the description Ealing Council provided in last week's announcement of the last phase of the Friary Park redevelopment.

They wrote only this: '...the construction of Block C (1-24 storeys), Block D (1-12 storeys) comprising 693 homes.'

'1 - 24 storeys', for example, disguises the truth that there is to be one tower of 24 storeys, another tower of 22 storeys, another of 15 and another of 14 storeys in one very bulky block as seen in the images above. In addition, there is a wraparound extension of 23 storeys on the 24 storey tower and another such extension of 20 storeys on the 22 storey tower.

An artist impression of the Friary Park Development (credit: Planning application).

Here, the full density of the whole Friary Park redevelopment is clear for all to see and the terrible lack of public open space is apparent.

Absurdly, the heights of these massive buildings is given in millimetres, doubtless in order to discourage people from reading the heights at all. The tallest of the green buildings, for example, is 116.175 metres: 10 metres over the permitted height.

Cap the Towers will now be writing to the Leader of the Council, Peter Mason, as well as the most senior officer in Planning, Peter George. There are five immediate questions to be answered.

1. Why has Ealing Council accepted, for consideration, a planning application which defies key parameters on the height and footprints of buildings which the Council itself set down, as a part of its planning permission for this final phase of development at Friary Park, only two years ago? (See Planning Committee Report 19/10/22, page 17.)
2. Why has the Financial Viability Assessment of this planning application, supplied by the official Government Assessor, been apparently omitted from the documentation published last Thursday? The Government, on its website, states that 'assessing the financial viability is crucial in deciding whether the project should proceed.'
3. With the anticipated increase in population that would follow from this application being approved, what would be the the new requirement of public open space, given that - as things stand - the developers already have a deficit of open space amounting to approximately 37,000 square metres?
4. Every single additional apartment that has been added to the development in this final application is a high-end, luxury flat for sale at market rate, probably to overseas investors. This will reduce the percentage of affordable housing on the estate, and reduce the percentage of social housing to a miserable 17% of the total. How can this be described as 'Homes for Londoners' or 'solving the housing crisis'?
5. Cap the Towers has been informed, by a spokesperson from the developer, that - as part of this planning application - they are intending to reduce the number of flats available as social housing even further than the 17% above. Given the 7,500 or so on Ealing Council's social housing list, it is scandalous that the Council should not insist that this developer should be increasing rather than reducing this provision. As the original planning permission was obtained on the understanding that 237 of the total number of apartments (1,345) were for social housing, will Ealing Council at least insist that this will remain the case?

Until these matters have been addressed by the Council, Cap the Towers maintains that this planning application should be withdrawn or, at the very least, suspended.

How can Ealing Council set about consulting the people of Acton when so much about this planning application remains unclear?

To find out more about this application, click here.

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