Southall Gasworks

Background

The Green Quarter development is a major regeneration scheme in the west of the borough, located on the former Southall Gasworks site. The developers, Berkeley West Thames have planning permission for a large mixed development on the site, which includes 3,750 new homes of which 931 are affordable as well as shops, a cinema and health centre, a primary school, and 40 acres of public parkland and a central park. 

In 2010 Ealing Council refused planning permission for the development, however, the decision was overturned by the then Mayor of London.

The Green Quarter development is one of the most complex regeneration programmes in the country. Due to its historical use as a gasworks and chemical works site from the 19th century until the late 1960s, there was contamination of the soil which has been treated in a soil hospital to make the land safe and suitable for its new uses, including housing.

The soil hospital completed its operations in March 2019 and Berkeley’s contractors dismantled it at the beginning of April. Most of the work to treat soil on the site has been completed. There is a relatively small area of the former gasworks site under the control of Cadent (a utilities company), who have applied to do some remediation work on this piece of land. As this is a much smaller amount of contaminated soil, it will be removed off-site.

In 2021, the council sought new legal advice from specialist counsel on the Southall Gasworks site. This advice and an action plan were drawn up by the council to implement the recommendations of this advice.

The council has now published previous legal advice on the gasworks from 2020.

Ealing Council has commissioned independent air quality monitoring around the site. Near real-time data is available at airqualityengland.co.uk. Further monitoring sites will be added in the coming weeks.

Ealing Council has also commissioned independent soil monitoring on the site. The first results are now available.