Ealing Council offices to be replaced
It was announced a while ago that the council intends to knock down the council offices in Ealing and redevelop with offices and housing.Looks like this is now advancing with this announcement yesterday."On Tuesday, 11 July, Ealing Council’s cabinet selected Galliford Try as the partner to take forward plans for the redevelopment of its headquarters building.The plans for the redevelopment of Perceval House will provide a new housing development and replacement council offices.In 2015 the council agreed to commence a selection process to appoint a partner to work with on redeveloping the site at 14-16 Uxbridge Road. If approved the scheme would provide hundreds of much needed homes, alongside a new library, modern customer services centre and smaller replacement council offices.The preferred partner, Galliford Try, proposes to provide council offices, a library and a customer service centre in a single new building with the frontage on Uxbridge Road, at no cost to the tax payer.The outline plan includes hundreds of new homes to be built across the rest of the site, including much needed affordable housing. The scheme will also include new shops along Longfield Avenue and a small basement car park for both council and residential use.Relocating the new offices to the front of the site will complement other office developments in the immediate area and create a civic focus adjacent to the listed Town Hall. It will also enable the new council offices to be co-located with the proposed library and customer services centre. Leader of Ealing Council, Councillor Julian Bell, said: “Our offices are in a key town centre location, but at the moment we aren’t making the best use of this important site.“These plans will deliver much needed affordable homes in our town centre and also provide us with a brand new customer service centre and library, and a smaller, more modern and cheaper to maintain and run office block.”In order to construct the new civic offices fronting Uxbridge Road it will be necessary to remove the front part of Perceval House to provide the space to begin construction of the new building.Under the plans council officers would continue to use the rear of the existing building until the new premises can be occupied. At the same time as the new civic building is being built, work would begin on the new homes at the rear of the site.Once the new offices are complete, the rest of the old building would be demolished to enable the new housing development to be completed and retail units to be built along Longfield Avenue.The Perceval House site extends to approximately 1.27 ha (3.14 acres). It backs on to the Great Western main line and is bordered by Longfield Avenue to the east and Uxbridge Road to the south. Following cabinet approval of the choice of preferred developer, further discussions will take place and the proposals will be drawn up in more detail and will go through a full planning process, which will involve statutory consultation with residents. Detailed design will begin in the autumn with a decision on the planning application not expected before spring 2018.All cabinet decisions are subject to call in for a period of five working days from the date of publication of the minutes of the meeting."
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