CAMPAIGNERS are preparing for the latest round in the 10-year battle to save Ealing’s Victoria Hall for the community.

A public consultation closes on April 28 on the latest attempt by the Charity Commission to allow Ealing Council to take control of the Victoria Hall. The council wants to sell it, along with Ealing Town Hall, to a hotel developer.

Roger Green, chair of the Friends of the Victoria Hall, said: “There has been little effort to run a proper public consultation.

“Information about it has been hidden away on an obscure council public notices web page that is hardly ever updated and a note pinned to a corner of a graffiti-daubed notice board in front of Ealing’s now-abandoned town hall.”

In July 2016, Ealing Council entered into an agreement with a developer to sell off its town hall on a 250-year lease, to turn it into a luxury hotel. 

However, more than 20% of the property consists of the Victoria Hall, built by public donations and, since 1893, the property of a charitable trust set up for the benefit of the community that had paid for it.

The consultation is the Charity Commission’s latest attempt in a process that began in 2019 to push through a new set of rules (a ‘scheme’) for the trust, which would clear the way for Ealing Council to take control of the Victoria Hall and sell it off.

Mr Green said: “The latest scheme, in our view, is even less satisfactory than the old one.

“What would be left to the charitable trust would be much reduced in size and flexibility.

“No space would be available to the community from Friday evenings to Monday mornings, except at boutique hotel wedding reception rates.”

He added: “The council’s mismanagement of the charity-owned property – the Victoria and Prince’s Halls plus associated rooms – has persisted for decades.

“Having not produced audited accounts for the charity for many years, it has presented the Commission with a dubious set of figures that effectively annihilate the charity by saddling it with massive historic debt.

“It even denies the charity any future income from the hiring of the space, by stipulating the developer should receive this.

“This latest scheme, the Commission’s third, seems to be designed to ensure the Victoria Hall Trust will go out of business, with a loss to the communities in Ealing of facilities originally intended by the original philanthropists.”

More on the proposed scheme at: https://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Details.aspx?PDFName=102398