Residents Allege Dirty Tricks Campaign

As communal garden featured in Around Ealing is threatened

Residents of Rosemont Court are furious over the felling of a protected tree and the removal of local businesses to make way for a Barratt development that will tower 7.5m over them. Nearly 100 people signed a petition against the six storey Barratt’s block which will be nearly three times the height of the current building, Acton Central Industrial Estate.

A decision on the proposal will be made tomorrow evening at 7:00pm in the Council Chamber of Ealing Town Hall.

Richard Newman, a Rosemont Court resident said, “Rosemont Court is a lovely 1930s art deco, four storey block, but we would need to be a grade 1 listed building to hope to stop this massive development.

"It just feels like a dirty tricks campaign where nothing can stand in the way of the developer or the Council’s need to build more homes. When even the Council planner says that there are no protected trees on the Industrial Estate they hope to demolish, despite the fact that it’s clearly stated on the council’s own website, we haven’t a hope of stopping Barratt.”

His wife, Jo Newman, said, “The first we knew someone was trying to build next to us was when we woke up one Sunday morning to the sound of chainsaws destroying a plane tree on the Estate adjacent to us. When we went to investigate with the local businesses, that neighbour us said it was nothing to do with them, and all they knew was that they were being asked to leave the site. Some of them had been there for 25 years.

"It was only later we discovered that the Council had told Barratt that both the protected tree and the local businesses were what they call ‘material considerations’ in the way of the development.”

What is particularly galling to the Rosemont Court residents is that their communal garden, which will lose a huge amount of sunlight, was only last month held up by the Council in October’s Around Ealing as a great example of sustainable development and a prime example of how to grow your own vegetables and compost food waste.

But residents say the new development will not only rob their garden of sunlight, but will also make it impossible to grow things there because of drainage problems.

Gemma Fowkes, who was featured in the article said: “I started this garden from very humble beginnings and my neighbours developed the work and really made it thrive. It’s such a shame that our neighbourly hard work is going to ruin.

She continued: “The severe loss of light and green space plus extra noise is going to make life unbearable for us and our one-year-old twins."

Another resident, Damian Smith, said: “I’ve seen correspondence where Council planner Andrew Vaughan states that there were no protected trees on site. This is completely wrong.

Also Ealing Council misinformed us about the height of our building, stating that it’s 14m high which is in fact not the height of our building, but the height of our lift shaft. The light calculations provided are also misleading.”

We could not ask Ealing Council to comment prior to the Planning meeting tomorrow, but will update this page with any further information.

November 24, 2009