-- a cThe Victoria Hall accounts for some 20% of Ealing Town Hall, and is the largest community space in the centre of a large multicultural Borough with a population the size of a small country. It was paid for by Victorian crowdfunding and is governed by a charitable Trust set up in 1893. It has served us for 126 years, hosting countless meetings, entertainments, protests, celebrations, examinations, exhibitions and more.
Since July 2016, Ealing Council has spent some £2m trying to dispose of the Victoria Hall and the Prince's Hall underneath it to hotel developers. Its facilities will be as good as lost to the people for whom they were created. Not only that, but part of this Grade II-listed building would be destroyed to accommodate the hotel.
The Victoria Hall is not the property of the Council, which it only discovered after a local residents’ group pointed out that the Victoria Hall and the Prince’s Hall were still owned by the Victoria Hall Trust and as such could not be included in the development deal that had been signed.
Ealing Council was obliged to apply to the Charity Commission to be allowed to take control of the Trust that owns the Hall. In 2019 the Charity Commission published a draft of a revised 'Scheme', the Trust's governing document, which would allow that to happen.
In January 2020 we challenged the first version of this Scheme with a devastating 40-page legal critique of its numerous flaws, along with 612 pages of supporting documents.
On 7 April 2020 the Charity Commission published its own review of Ealing Council’s application to take control of the assets of the Trust. This blocked the Council’s plan to sell the Ealing Town.
In press statement released with the Review, the Charity Commission said: “We are not satisfied that the decision to lease to the commercial developer, on the terms agreed, is in the best interests of the charity [Victoria Hall Trust]. We expect the charity to reconsider this deal, in light of our decision, and we have made a series of specific recommendations to the charity to consider.
“We expect the charity to now undertake further work to consider how they can best advance the interests of the charity and the benefit it delivers to the Borough of Ealing.”
The Charity Commission verdict meant that Ealing Council's deal with hotel developer Mastcraft could not proceed unless the Council substantially revised its proposals.
The 13-page ruling agreed with many of the serious criticisms of the Council scheme made by the Friends of the Victoria Hall and the many other objectors.
On 24 November 2020, a response was sent by Ealing Council officers to the Charity Commission in which very few changes had been made to the stalled Scheme.
We wrote to the Commission to raise our serious concern that not only does the Council propose to ignore most of the recommendations of Charity Commission Review, but its response contained some significant errors of fact.
We explained why we believe that the draft Scheme for the Victoria Hall cannot be allowed to proceed in the way the Council wants and is likely to be challenged if it does.
On 22 March 2021 the Charity Commission published what it ruled would be the final draft of the Scheme for the Victoria Hall Trust.
Thanks to a ramshackle IT system, it took the Charity Commission 10 days to actually publish the Scheme, dated 12 March, on its website, thus eating into the precious 42 days allowed for any appeal against the changes that would allow the hall to be lost to the community.
What’s more it’s unclear what’s actually being proposed.
The Scheme refers extensively to something called the Community Use Protocol (CUP) which is supposed to protect access at affordable rates for local groups to the Victoria hall – as long as it’s during the week. And the space available in the Hall itself will be reduced by half if the new owners are allowed, as they have proposed, to insert a large concrete block into its eastern end.
However, there’s no publicly available final version of the CUP – the details will be agreed behind closed doors by the Council and its boutique hotel partner.
All the Council can provide is a month’s old draft document showing tracked changes which may or may not have been accepted and blank spaces where the floor plans should be.
Consequently, local people won't have any say in the final agreement of when or if they can use the Hall.
Incredibly, the new Scheme has ignored most of the shortcomings of previous versions, including many that had been identified in the Commission’s own April 2020 Review.
The three main things wrong are:
The Friends of the Victoria Hall is taking expert legal advice about mounting a challenge to the new Scheme.
Support our fight to save the Victoria Hall for the community by contributing to our appeal:
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/save-the-victoria-hall/
Since July 2016, Ealing Council has spent some £2m trying to dispose of the Victoria Hall and the Prince's Hall underneath it to hotel developers. Its facilities will be as good as lost to the people for whom they were created. Not only that, but part of this Grade II-listed building would be destroyed to accommodate the hotel.
The Victoria Hall is not the property of the Council, which it only discovered after a local residents’ group pointed out that the Victoria Hall and the Prince’s Hall were still owned by the Victoria Hall Trust and as such could not be included in the development deal that had been signed.
Ealing Council was obliged to apply to the Charity Commission to be allowed to take control of the Trust that owns the Hall. In 2019 the Charity Commission published a draft of a revised 'Scheme', the Trust's governing document, which would allow that to happen.
In January 2020 we challenged the first version of this Scheme with a devastating 40-page legal critique of its numerous flaws, along with 612 pages of supporting documents.
On 7 April 2020 the Charity Commission published its own review of Ealing Council’s application to take control of the assets of the Trust. This blocked the Council’s plan to sell the Ealing Town.
In press statement released with the Review, the Charity Commission said: “We are not satisfied that the decision to lease to the commercial developer, on the terms agreed, is in the best interests of the charity [Victoria Hall Trust]. We expect the charity to reconsider this deal, in light of our decision, and we have made a series of specific recommendations to the charity to consider.
“We expect the charity to now undertake further work to consider how they can best advance the interests of the charity and the benefit it delivers to the Borough of Ealing.”
The Charity Commission verdict meant that Ealing Council's deal with hotel developer Mastcraft could not proceed unless the Council substantially revised its proposals.
The 13-page ruling agreed with many of the serious criticisms of the Council scheme made by the Friends of the Victoria Hall and the many other objectors.
On 24 November 2020, a response was sent by Ealing Council officers to the Charity Commission in which very few changes had been made to the stalled Scheme.
We wrote to the Commission to raise our serious concern that not only does the Council propose to ignore most of the recommendations of Charity Commission Review, but its response contained some significant errors of fact.
We explained why we believe that the draft Scheme for the Victoria Hall cannot be allowed to proceed in the way the Council wants and is likely to be challenged if it does.
On 22 March 2021 the Charity Commission published what it ruled would be the final draft of the Scheme for the Victoria Hall Trust.
Thanks to a ramshackle IT system, it took the Charity Commission 10 days to actually publish the Scheme, dated 12 March, on its website, thus eating into the precious 42 days allowed for any appeal against the changes that would allow the hall to be lost to the community.
What’s more it’s unclear what’s actually being proposed.
The Scheme refers extensively to something called the Community Use Protocol (CUP) which is supposed to protect access at affordable rates for local groups to the Victoria hall – as long as it’s during the week. And the space available in the Hall itself will be reduced by half if the new owners are allowed, as they have proposed, to insert a large concrete block into its eastern end.
However, there’s no publicly available final version of the CUP – the details will be agreed behind closed doors by the Council and its boutique hotel partner.
All the Council can provide is a month’s old draft document showing tracked changes which may or may not have been accepted and blank spaces where the floor plans should be.
Consequently, local people won't have any say in the final agreement of when or if they can use the Hall.
Incredibly, the new Scheme has ignored most of the shortcomings of previous versions, including many that had been identified in the Commission’s own April 2020 Review.
The three main things wrong are:
- There’s no mechanism for managing Council conflict of interest among the trustees so the Council’s wishes will always predominate. Proceedings at the Trustee meetings that have taken place since the Review in April have confirmed our view that the Trustees remain conflicted because of their dual role as Ealing Councillors
- It’s not been agreed what Trust will be paid in return for giving up its property
- The extent of that property has not been properly identified and has been underestimated in the Scheme, thus reducing the share it will receive of the rental income the Council will be charging the hotel developer for the next 250 years
The Friends of the Victoria Hall is taking expert legal advice about mounting a challenge to the new Scheme.
Support our fight to save the Victoria Hall for the community by contributing to our appeal:
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/save-the-victoria-hall/
Our CampaignHere's why you need to act to save the largest indoor community space in central Ealing.
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About the Victoria HallAll you need to know about why the Victoria Hall is so important.
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Join Us!Don't just sit there, do something to save the Victoria Hall!
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The Friends of the Victoria Hall
The Friends of the Victoria Hall is supported by
Central Ealing Neighbourhood Forum, Campaign for an Ealing Performance & Arts Centre, Central Ealing Residents’ Association, Ealing Art Group, Ealing Arts & Leisure, Ealing Civic Society, Save Ealing’s Centre, Gordon Road & Surrounding Streets Residents' Association, Residents’ Association of Madeley and Westbury Roads, West Ealing Neighbours and many individual members.
Central Ealing Neighbourhood Forum, Campaign for an Ealing Performance & Arts Centre, Central Ealing Residents’ Association, Ealing Art Group, Ealing Arts & Leisure, Ealing Civic Society, Save Ealing’s Centre, Gordon Road & Surrounding Streets Residents' Association, Residents’ Association of Madeley and Westbury Roads, West Ealing Neighbours and many individual members.
