We meet via Zoom on the first Tuesday of each month, at 6.30pm. Please email to oonforum@gmail.com to join our mailing/membership list. Our next Zoom session is on 4th April 2023.
You are welcome to join the Forum if you live or work in (or near) the area of north-west London for which the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation has been the local planning authority since 2015. Membership of the Forum is free and open to all.
The Forum was ‘designated’ by the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation in 2018. We are currently going through the process of ‘redesignation’. Public consultation is now closed and the OPDC Planning Committee on March 2nd is being recommended to approve our designation as a neighbourhood forum, for a further five year period. This is an important step, extending the forum’s statutory powers to prepare a neighbourhood plan or (in future) a Neighbourhood Priorities Statement.
Our Forum continues to campaign against the very high-density/high rise development which is being inflicted on North Acton, East Acton, and North Hammersmith. We see the granting of planning consents at Old Oak West as premature, given the timescale over which
Following the decision of the OPDC Board at its meeting on June 22nd 2022 to adopt the final version of the OPDC Local Plan, OPDC planners are part way through preparation of a Supplementary Planning Document for the newly defined area of ‘Old Oak West’. Our neighbourhood area lies at the heart of this part of Old Oak.
Last autumn we obtained via a FoI request a set of dates when HS2 plan to release the sites they currently use as construction compounds. These are several years later than the originally assumed dates, when the new Old Oak Common station was due to open in 2026. The latest dates provided are shown below, on the four major sites involved.
The date of 2032 for release of the construction compound at Atlas Road/Channel Gate has big implications for OPDC’s plans. This is the largest of the 4 development sites and destined in the OPDC Local Plan to become the new ‘major town centre’ for a new Old Oak, with a 2 hectare park. Release of the site by HS2 is tied in with construction of the planned HS2 terminal at Euston. There is continued media speculation on when a Euston terminus for HS2 will become operational, with talk of a further 4 year extension to the timetable.
HS2 themselves currently say The HS2 Euston station will be built in two stages. Stage A is planned to open in 2026 with six below ground platforms and Stage B1 opening in 2033 with a further five below ground platforms.
The Forum has since November 2022 been arguing the case for a full review of OPDC by the London Assembly. The last review of the Development Corporation was in 2016 and much has changed since then. It is not yet definite that the HS2 ‘development sites’ shown above will ever be transferred to OPDC, as originally envisaged.
There may be a case for a smaller and strategic body to continue to work with the Department of Transport and HS2 on the ‘delivery’ of regeneration around the site of Old Oak Common station. But overall and after nearly 8 years, we do not see the model of a Mayoral Development Corporation as having been the right solution for Old Oak
Proposals for One Portal Way
It is not too late to submit an objection to the mega-application at One Portal Way. OPDC are legally required to take all representations into account until the date of decision. See our campaign website at www.imperialfolly.org.uk for more background. The decision on this application has been delayed for over a year. We think this is because the developers (Imperial College) have had to add second staircases to all the tall buildins, to meet new Building Regulations to be introduced shortly.
The image below is what the increasingly notorious ‘North Acton Cluster’ will look like if this development is built, along with other towers that already constructed or have planning consent.
Objections and/or comments can be emailed to planningapplications@opdc.london.gov.uk. Please include the reference 21/0181/OUTOPDC and your name and address (which will be redacted before comments appear on the OPDC online planning register).
Further background to the Forum
Old Oak is a part of west London lying at the heart of the UK’s largest urban regeneration project. It is the location of the HS2/Queen Elizabeth Line rail interchange at Old Oak Common station, on which construction started in 2020. Completion and opening of the station is due some time between 2029 and 2033.
Since April 2015 the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC) has been the planning authority for 650 hectares lying within the London Boroughs of Ealing, Brent, and Hammersmith & Fulham. The OPDC is accountable to an appointed board, and ultimately to the Mayor of London.
Because of its future connectivity to the national rail system, Old Oak has been earmarked for many years as one of London’s major ‘opportunity areas’. The rail interchange is seen as a ‘catalyst’ for high density commercial and residential development.
Back in 2015, a target of 24,000 new homes at Old Oak was set in the revised London Plan. This target stays the same in the 2021 London Plan. Yet during 2020-2022, London’s patterns of travel and working changed significantly during the pandemic.
Much of Old Oak has remained as industrial and railway land, bisected by the Grand Union Canal. In 2015 a group of local residents associations in the area came together as an ‘interim’ neighbourhood forum. Our original aim was to achieve designation of a 280 hectare Old Oak neighbourhood area, and to prepare a neighbourhood plan which would help to integrate the existing residential settlements within and around the edge of the OPDC boundary.
After many months of discussion with the Corporation and with Hammersmith & Fulham Council, both these planning authorities rejected the boundary we had proposed (shown in blue on the map below). In September 2017, the OPDC designated a much reduced 22 hectare are in East Acton (see green boundary below). Hammersmith and Fulham Council designated a separate (but nearby) boundary as the old Oak Estate neighbourhood area (see brown boundary below).
Details of the reasons for these decisions, as published by each authority, can be found here and here. Following a further designation application, the Old Oak Neighbourhood Forum was designated in February 2018. This body has the legal powers to prepare a neighbourhood plan for the 22 hectare area that includes the Wesley Estate, the Island site (TITRA railway cottages), Midland Terrace/Shaftesbury Gardens and Wells House Road.
No organisation has yet come forward to apply for designation as an Old Oak Estate Neighbourhood Forum, in Hammersmith & Fulham. This area remains one of two ‘orphan’ neighbourhood areas in the Borough.
The Forum held its inaugural meeting in May 2018. Its membership is open to ‘full members’ (i.e. those who live or work within the 22 hectare boundary) and to ‘affiliate members’ (those who live or work in the wider area).
Please get in touch by emailing oonforum@gmail.com if you wish to join the Forum as a full member or an ‘affiliated member.’ There is no membership fee to join.
Other pages on this website give more details of who we are and the story so far. These include a second draft of our neighbourhood plan (2020 version).