Opinion: The Friends of the Victoria Hall (FoVH) are calling for Ealing Council to reopen Victoria Hall.
In September 2023 Ealing Council announced the closure of Victoria Hall, Prince’s Hall and Ealing Town Hall. The council owns the Town Hall, but not the Victoria Hall and Prince’s Hall. They are owned by the Victoria Hall Trust (VHT), a charity formed in 1893 primarily to ensure that the Victoria Hall is available for community use.
For 12 months now the council as sole trustee has failed miserably in its key function of making Victoria Hall available to Ealing’s community. The Friends of the Victoria Hall are now demanding that the premises be reopened.
The reason given for the 2023 hall closures was health and safety issues. But the Council has never produced a report documenting these, despite multiple requests.
Ealing Council made itself sole trustee of VHT in 2017, having announced in 2016 that it was disposing of the halls in a 250-year lease to a hotel developer. Planning permission was granted even though the plans included demolishing the eastern end of Victoria Hall to accommodate hotel rooms.
In February 2023 FoVH won a partial victory over the council and the Commission at a Charity Tribunal. Since then all FoVH attempts to discuss the Hall’s future with the council have been rebuffed, and an open letter to the trust (26 July) asking about plans for re-opening received no response.
A new plan put together by the council and the commission will soon go to a public consultation. If the Trust accepts it, FoVH fears it probably won’t be long before the Hall faces a wrecking ball.
So Ealing orchestral and choral concerts, exhibitions, discos, amateur dramatics, rock, folk, roots and ethnic music festivals, religious festivals, weddings, political meetings, NHS rehab classes, election hustings, election counts and protest meetings … will all have to continue being held in church halls, community centres, and tents in Walpole Park.
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