STOP THE TOWERS
EALING
Perceval House development
New Council offices come with massive housing development of 477 flats including an over-bearing 26 storey MEGA TOWER BLOCK
The videos below are from social housing residents at Apsley House which will be adversely impacted by this development near their homes.
10 reasons to object to this monstrous development proposed at Percevel House
(Just select points you feel strongly about and write a few lines in your own words.)
1. It’s too tall: The 26-storey tower will be Ealing’s tallest. It will tower over Ealing’s historic town centre - 4 storeys higher than the Apex building on Uxbridge Road and 8 storeys higher than the tallest tower in Dickens Yard. If it is built developers of other sites will claim it gives them a precedent for even higher buildings nearby.
2. Mass Density: Cramming 477 flats, plus the Council offices and library onto this relatively small site pushed hard up against the railway is completely excessive. Residential densities will be half as great again as on Dickens Yard.
3. Poor Design (which goes against the London Plan) and destroying heritage: The design, appearance and scale of the new offices next to the Grade II listed Town Hall are all wrong. Very tellingly, the application includes no heritage assessment as Government policy requires it to. Historic England have criticised it but the application doesn’t report what they say.
4. Sustainability: Perceval House is less than 40 years old and an awful lot of embodied energy went into its construction. A Council as concerned about climate change as Ealing’s claims to be should not be demolishing it. The far greener course would be to refurbish it. Tall towers are NOT CARBON NEUTRAL
5. Overbearing & loss of privacy: No serious assessment has been made of the overbearing impact of the development on nearby residential streets - Craven Ave, Gordon Road, Longfield Road, Castlebar Road, The Avenue, Carlton Gardens, Carlton Road will suffer loss of privacy.
6. Loss of light and over shadowing: Its over shadowing will result in loss of light for hundreds of residents in nearby homes.
7. Not really affordable & lack of family homes: The Council claims it’s providing much needed ‘affordable’ housing. Only 14.7% of the new homes will be ‘genuinely affordable’. There will be very few family sized homes. Most of the flats are 1 or 2 bedrooms. Only seven 3-bedrooms flats
8. Homes not for local people: With just seven 3-bed flats out of 477 new homes this scheme won’t provide Ealing the family homes it needs most so it won’t solve our housing crisis. Besides, many new flats in nearby Dickens Yard lie empty most of the year. Large developments now being built at Film Works & the old BT site on Gordon Road are now being marketed in Asia. What’s to stop Vistry’s 52% share of the new homes being marketed the same way.
9. Wasted space: The ground floors of the residential blocks are commercial units like those at Dickens Yard. The Dickens Yard units have been empty for years, so who’s going to take those in Perceval House which is even further from the town centre? Far better to use this space for homes and reduce building heights elsewhere.
10. Pressure on surrounding roads: Servicing arrangements for the both the new homes and the Council offices are totally inadequate. No onsite access to the new homes is to be provided and there will be just one loading bay outside the bollards at the north end of the site. This will be completely insufficient to meet the demand for deliveries, tradespeople, removal vehicles, visitors etc to 477 flats. The new development will inevitably cause illegal parking along Longfield Avenue and Craven Avenue to the rear of the site. The turning bans at Longfield Avenue mean access to the development will be mostly from the north on quiet residential roads, which is against Julian Bell’s Low Traffic Neighbourhood schemes.