This month, the council has reached an incredibly important milestone in submitting its new local plan.
The plan sets out our vision for how we hope our 7 towns will grow and change over the next decade, ensuring that our communities have a real sense of pride and identity in the environment. Our priority is to bring back well-paid jobs to the borough; and to ensure every family can access a decent living income, and can have a safe and genuinely affordable home.
To make this happen, we know that we need to secure good growth for every part of the borough – right across each of our towns, high streets and local neighbourhoods. To do this, we need to attract investment, and from the right investors – such as those who want to buy into our towns for the long term and create thriving communities with decent homes and good jobs for our residents.
‘Connected to the community’
Since I became leader, we have made a series of changes to how we do planning, to make it more connected to the community, with the idea of rebalancing who has power and to put it back into the hands of local residents.
Whenever we’ve looked to regenerate our council estates, we’ve continued to consult (or ‘ballot’) our tenants and leaseholders first – giving them a vote and ensuring they have a say in important matters.
We scrapped the Ealing in London inward investment programme and have reset the council’s relationship with developers, placing community benefit at the heart of investment decisions.
To ensure that residents have confidence in the decisions that members are taking, we’ve ensured all meetings with applicants or developers are entered into the members’ register of interests.
We have also ended the council’s attendance at the MIPIM event in Cannes.
And, we have set out new rules on tall buildings to ensure they are only built in appropriate places.
We’ve set up Design Review Panels and Community Review Panels too, to give local communities a stronger voice in scrutinising and informing developer’s investment proposals.
We will also be adding a conservation officer to our growing team of design, heritage and sustainability specialists, to ensure that the character of our unique towns are preserved and enhanced by new development.
All these changes are helping us continue our great work in securing investment in the borough to drive growth, but to do it in a way that builds thriving communities and ensures the benefits of growth are spread to all of our residents.
Our local plan will help us do that well into the next decade.
