Campaigners net hearing over planning permission for QPR training ground

Campaigners seeking to challenge Ealing Council’s decision to grant Queen’s Park Rangers planning permission for the redevelopment of a sports ground and to give the club a 200-year lease have been granted an oral hearing.

Earlier this month Mr Justice Lewis rejected the application for judicial review from the Hanwell Community Forum on the papers.

The hearing will take place at the Royal Courts of Justice on 24 June.

Carolyn Brown, chair of the Hanwell Community Forum,, said: “We object to the decisions on several grounds. The council intends to lease our land for 200 years, the equivalent of seven generations, at no rental income; QPR will take two thirds of the land for their own benefit, leaving the community with only a third of the land, no adult full size pitches, and insufficient smaller pitches to be able to run the major sports tournaments for schools and clubs which have been held there for the last 10+ years.”

Brown claimed that Ealing had “disregarded national, London’s and their own planning policies enabling the development of buildings far too high, intrusive and poorly designed for open green space which, in theory, is protected from commercial developments such as this”. 

The forum said its grounds for challenge would include conflicts of interests, a failure to get permission from the Secretary of State for disposal of the land and inappropriate development of protected metropolitan open land.

Warren Farm Sports Centre is located between Hanwell and Norwood Green.