The boundary of our neighbourhood area was set by OPDC in September 2017, at the time when the Corporation ‘refused’ our original application for a much larger neighbourhood covering the ‘Old Oak’ part of the OPDC boundary.
At that time the OPDC Draft Local Plan was focused on ‘Old Oak North’ and the Cargiant landholding. This was planned to be the new ‘major town centre’ linked to to the new Old Oak Common station.
In 2019 OPDC changed direction and now sees the Channel Gate and Atlas Road sites (off Victoria Road/Old Oak Lane) as an area for concentrated development of 3,100 new homes. This site now features in the Modified Draft Local Plan as ‘part of major town centre’.
Our Forum has doubts about the realism of these proposals. This is a far from obvious location to attract ‘town centre’ uses and will be a 1km walk from Old Oak Common station. We have therefore been proposing since December 2020 that OPDC should grant an extension to the Old Oak neighbourhood boundary to take in the land shown as hatched on the map below.
This extended area would allow for the preparation of a ‘contingent’ part of the Old Oak Neighbourhood Plan, to come into effect should the OPDC Draft Local Plan fail to achieve adoption after its continued ‘examination’ by Planning Inspector Paul Clark.
Another possible event is that the HS2 project is cancelled, even at this late stage, on the basis that assumptions in its business plan not longer stack up as a result of the fall in rail passenger numbers caused by the pandemic. In either of these two eventualities, a ‘planning void’ for this part of Ealing would need to be filled. Use of the neighbourhood planning framework could achieve this outcome faster than preparation of a further Local Plan.
Our designation application will be published by OPDC for a 6 week period of public consultation. Currently it looks as if this will not start until mid July. Meanwhile a copy of our application can be downloaded here OONF Designation application June 6th 2021