Since 2018, I have been campaigning against the adverse health effects of the Southall Gasworks remediation, along with many other local residents.
It’s been a tough battle for many reasons, not least the vast power imbalance between the developer Berkeley Group and their myriad subordinate shell companies making half a billion pound profits every year, and a community living in one of the most economically deprived and racialised areas of the country, not just Ealing borough.
It hasn’t been helped by what I believe has been the extraordinary influence Berkeley has acquired with Ealing Council and some local community leaders and organisations, while residents’ voices and lived experience have consistently been undermined, downplayed and dismissed.
At various times, we’ve faced legal threats from council officers and been prevented from speaking at or attending community meetings. There have also been incidents involving our jobs, families and property which I can’t conclusively connect to the campaign, but taken together, they’ve sometimes left me wondering what on earth was going on.
There are many stories of Southall residents whose health has been affected through respiratory and pulmonary diseases, and more.
In the Guardian newspaper produced video above, community members report suffering from severe symptoms, including asthma, headaches, and cancer, which they attribute to toxic odors and soil contaminants like benzene.
My whole family was affected, including our lovely young and healthy little rescue cat who died suddenly from multiple organ failure in September 2018.
My symptoms at the time were an otherwise unexplained series of chest infections, the number and severity of which I hadn’t experienced before or since that period.
Then, in 2024, I was diagnosed with chronic lung disease otherwise known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (or COPD if you’re short of breath).
Late last year, I became aware of a planning decision notice published by Ealing Council in 2008.
The notice relates to early stage Gasworks development plans, and instructs interested parties at that time that, among many other things, a community Health Impact Assessment must be carried out.
Below is the full text of that particular section, with my emphasis added.
HEALTH IMPACT ASSESSMENT
A full Health Impact Assessment (HIA) should be commissioned to identify the potential and negative health impacts of the development on those living in both existing and new housing, and the means to address them, in both the short and longer terms.
The HIA should consider short and long term effects on health status and on the need for primary and secondary health services. Considerations would range from (for example) increased need for child health services arising from an increased population, to potential exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases arising from temporary decreases in air quality (if identified) and positive and negative effects on mental well-being of changes in the environment.
The HIA should involve local communities and take into account their views, following best practice on community engagement.
Recommendations from the HIA should be incorporated in the final plans for the site.
As far as I’ve been able to establish, no such community Health Impact Assessment was ever carried out that considered the potential exacerbation of COPD arising from temporary decreases in air quality, or anything else identified in that recommendation.
Why does this matter now?
Well, one reason it matters is because at least two massive hyperscale data centres are being built in Southall and others right next door in Hayes, across the canal from the Gasworks site.
This is and will be its own story, but residents’ health and environmental concerns are already being fobbed off by Ealing Council.
As I keep saying to people, it’s like the Gasworks story all over again.
Watch this space!
Full document available here: p-2008-3981-decision-notice-2053662.pdf.
The original document url on Ealing Council’s planning portal is the memorable: https://pam.ealing.gov.uk/online-applications/files/04D0D49869ABA343B7405B14A536D99E/pdf/P_2008_3981-DECISION_NOTICE-2053662.pdf, but sometimes when I check to see if it’s working it gives me a “document unavailable” error.
The planning application number is P/2008/3981, so you should be able to find it by searching for that.
The full planning application is here.