Fed up with Ealing Council? Do you find it is poor at working with local organisations, lacks timely consultation, and ignores objections?  

You’re not alone. A survey in 2017 undertaken by the local umbrella group “Ealing Matters”, found considerable dissatisfaction with the Council’s engagement with residents. 

A new approach has been suggested to help overcome this: a local Council.

At Ealing Council’s Cabinet meeting tonight (10th July 2018) Councillor Gary Malcolm attacked Labour-run Ealing Council for failing in so many areas. These included:

• Ealing Council is failing as figures show that 46% of its performance is worsening compared to the targets.
• Failing targets for Good or Outstanding schools.
• Failing, where only 1.8% of people’s journeys are by cycle, against the low target of 3.5%
• Failing to keep our streets clean where targets were failed for litter, graffiti and fly posting.
• Failing residents who waited to be spoken to when phoning Ealing Council people waited 48 seconds against a target of 30 seconds (many just hang up!)

Yes, given yesterday’s [25th June 2018] new where Heathrow was approved. Despite the commitments it will mean many more flights, more noise pollution and a worsening air quality. London suffers enough with bad air quality.

The government have just ignored the tens of thousands of comments from residents across London whose views were mainly against Heathrow. If you were to build an airport in West London you would not site it at Heathrow. It is just in the wrong place so expanding Heathrow cannot be the right approach.

Ealing Council wants to introduce shared parking bays in about 40 areas of Southfield. This will allow large numbers of commuters to park within the Controlled Parking Zones where many residents already find it a struggle to park. There was no consultation!

Since the plans were announced over 200 people have written to Ealing Council’s Transport team to complain.

The payment by commuters will only be £4.50. This is likely to encourage huge numbers of drivers from outside London to park cheaply in Southfield and then get to work using the tube network.

Of the 200 or so emails that residents have written to Ealing Council only 2 are in favour of the scheme!

On 25 January, Wimbledon resident Paul Kohler, formally launched a legal challenge to the London Mayor’s plans to close 37 police stations across the capital.

The legal challenge is seeking permission to take the decision to close more than half of the current police stations in London to Judicial Review. Lawyers acting on half of Mr Kohler have argued that the public consultation and consequent decision were legally flawed and unlawful.

Ealing residents have re-elected Councillors Jon Ball, Gary Malcolm, Gary Busuttil and Andrew Steed in the 2018 local elections.

Southfield ward has remained fully controlled by three Liberal Democrat councillors, as it has been since 2010, whilst Cllr Ball kept his seat that he has had since 2002 in Ealing Common ward.

Ealing's Liberal Democrat candidates received a massive 35,228 overall across all 23 wards - just over a 228% increase in vote share from the 2014 local election results. This is a clear message from Ealing's residents that they believe in our shared values of openness, tolerance and unity, and an endorsement of our electoral manifesto.

Developing...

A resident of Rothschild Road said: “Councillor Andrew Streed and his colleagues get things done...they are the only ones I see actively doing things to make the lives of constituents better, safer and cleaner.”

In the May local elections vote Liberal Democrat to elect hard working Councillors.

In a recent public meeting, Ealing Conservative Finance spokesperson said that his party would have made £30
million of additional cuts to the Council budget.

Councillor Andrew Steed said: "We all know the Conservative government has made massive cuts to Council funding and
Liberal Democrats say that more cuts will leave us with a less safe and dirtier Chiswick and Acton."

While Ealing labour council is allowing the development of the 15 storey apartment block for the leisure centre they do not seem to be taking any active measures to support the local infrastructure.

At a recent Cleveland area meeting a labour councillor suggested that all Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ) projects are initiated by the residents.  In fact, in 2016 Ealing Labour Council started a rolling plan to introduce 21 new controlled parking zone (CPZ) consultations. 

Are you next? 

• Will you have to pay to park outside your own house?
• Will a CPZ in a neighbouring area make it impossible to park in your own street?
• Will displaced cars from a nearby area cause obstruction in a busy road?