Ealing uses CPO to unlock £100m cultural quarter
0Ealing Council has made a compulsory purchase order to acquire a former cinema in order to progress a new £100m cultural quarter.
The council said it was making the CPO as a backstop in case negotiations to buy land around the cinema fail.
The order also includes the site of a neighbouring office building, bar and other properties.
Council leader Julian Bell said: “While we would have preferred not to have needed to make a CPO, the people of Ealing have been waiting for a cinema for six years now.
“This area needs to be improved. And after all the delays we want to ensure this comprehensive scheme and the benefits it brings to Ealing will be delivered.”
Last September, the council signed an agreement with developer Land Securities to develop the scheme, which will include an eight-screen arthouse cinema, restaurants, shops and homes.
A statement from the council said that the CPO process will take several months. If the order is confirmed by communities secretary Eric Pickles, the council hopes to complete the scheme by 2018, in time for the opening of a nearby Crossrail station.
Land Securities announced last week that Picturehouse Cinemas has been selected as the cinema operator for the development.
Land Securities’ Project Director, Riccardo Mai, said: “The council will use its CPO powers as a last resort but it remains ours and the council’s preference to try and reach earlier agreement with the affected parties wherever possible, even after the CPO is made.”
Land Securities was granted planning permission for the scheme in December 2013.
Separately, the council has approved plans to cut its budget by £96m by 2019.
Over the five year period, the council expects the amount available to spend on council services will drop by 40%.
Bell said: “Our main government grant is forecast to be obliterated over the next five years and these severe and unrelenting cuts may even stretch out as far as the end of the decade.
“I want local people to understand the scale of cuts being forced on the council which will mean that many services will need to change and it is possible some may even have to stop.
The latest saving target comes on top of the £87m of budget reductions that the council has agreed since 2010.
The council has still to make decisions about which departmental budgets the savings will be made from.
