EMOTIONS ran high last week as Ealing planners allowed the controversial Durston House application in Castlebar Road to be approved with the chair’s casting vote.
Plans to consolidate the school’s present three buildings by selling them and building an expanded school on playing fields in Carlton Road departed from Ealing council’s usual policy not to build on greenfield sites.
Former Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq spoke at the meeting, pointing out that the last remaining open space in Ealing Broadway ward would be built over.
Campaigner Nic Moran expressed his dismay after highlighting the safety of pupils entering and leaving the site.
He told Ealing Today: “When asked about biodiversity, councillors were lied to and the whole meeting was based on falsehoods, lies and misrepresentation.
Why are children and parents in this area of Ealing being forced out, deserted by this council and being given another huge private school but no state option. Not everyone has £120,000 to spend on private prep school fees.”
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Unusually, the application united three MPs from across the party divide. Ealing Central and Acton’s Labour MP Rupa Huq joined forces with her one-time adversary Joy Morrissey, who stood for the Conservatives in the same seat in 2017.
She has since been elected MP for Beaconsfield. Their joint letter drew attention to the lack of need for expansion, which will provide a 20 per cent increase in places from to 540 when there is a surplus of primary school places in W5.
It also pointed out the added pressure on an already narrow road with no passing places and the failure to comply with government policy that planning applications need to demonstrate biodiversity net gain and leave the environment in a better state.
Rupa Huq MP said: “We live in an age where our planet is at risk with a climate crisis, so replacing grassland with a concrete box, surrounded by plastic turf, is hugely damaging for the environment.”
Alex Stafford, MP for Rother Valley since December and long-standing councillor for Ealing Broadway ward, said: “Not only will this development destroy green space in Ealing, but it will not provide any benefits to residents or children of the borough.
“I have been told that only a small handful of the children leaving Durston go on to study in Ealing, with the vast majority of them being educated outside the borough.”
There is a power of appeal to City Hall and campaigners aim to take their case to Sadiq Khan.
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