On Tuesday we handed our response to Ealing’s draft local plan, a weighty tome at over 60 pages with appendices.  In the document we present our concerns about how the current draft Local Plan is likely to put Grove Farm and other open spaces at greater risk of development. In it we examined the review of Grove Farm’s Metropolitan Open Land (MOL) pointing out issues with it while filling in missing information. We believe firmly that Grove Farm does meet the criteria of MOL and should keep this protection. We also:

• examined the inconsistences in the process used for all MOL sites. 

• presented the fact that there is a missing integral green infrastructure strategy that should be underpinning the draft Local Plan.  Such a strategy is necessary as it ensures that the environment is at the core of the document. Thus, allowing the document to include not only provision for housing but also help address the climate and ecological emergency.

• asked for the council to collaborate with the public and community groups interested in in nature and the environment when they produce this strategy as so many of us care deeply for Ealing's green spaces. We believe it is difficult to evaluate the current draft without such a document in place. Consequently, we developed our own map of Ealing's green spaces and how they connect (the ecological network) to help us evaluate all the changes earmarked to take place around Ealing.

• gave feedback on all MOLs, Greenbelt sites and developments that would affect open spaces.

• finally we examined all the policies in the draft Local Plan that would effect nature, the environment and open spaces making suggestions as to improvements and changes that, in our opinion, could be made to strengthen them.

In addition to the document we included our petitions that showed the public backing for protecting Grove Farm. At the time we had over 400 in person signatures to our petition and over 1000 on our change.org petition.

Thank you so much for your support.