Campaigns
Southall Stories reports on campaigns as part of the public record: what residents were asking for, what institutions promised, what changed, and what happened in the end.
Some campaigns are active. Others have concluded, succeeded in part, failed, or moved into a different phase. This page keeps those outcomes visible without leaving old calls to action hanging around after events have moved on.
It is also a directory. Some of the campaigns and source material linked below were not reported on directly by Southall Stories, but they are useful parts of the local civic record and are kept here for reference.
Current and continuing campaigns
Clean air, pollution and environmental health
Southall has lived for years with disputes over air quality, contaminated land, industrial emissions and the health impacts of major development.
Southall Stories continues to follow the evidence, official monitoring, regulatory decisions and community responses around pollution and public health.
- Browse environment and health reporting →
- Clean Air for Southall and Hayes — archived campaign website
Local democracy and accountability
Campaigning around petitions, consultations, public meetings, planning, council scrutiny and access to information continues across Southall and Ealing.
The focus here is less on promoting a single campaign than on documenting how decisions are made, what residents are told, and whether public bodies follow through.
- Browse local democracy reporting →
- Southall Residents Alliance
- Ealing Council meetings and papers
- How to make Freedom of Information requests — WhatDoTheyKnow
Planning, development and green space
Several resident campaigns have challenged large developments, building height, loss of green space and the way planning decisions are made across Ealing.
Useful external records include:
Campaigns that have concluded
Save Ealing’s Children’s Centres
The campaign against Ealing Council’s planned closure and reorganisation of children’s centres raised substantial public support and funded a judicial review challenge.
The legal challenge has now concluded. In R (JO) v London Borough of Ealing [2026] EWHC 886 (Admin), Mr Justice Kimblin dismissed the claim. The judgment found, among other things, that the consultation had been undertaken at a sufficiently formative stage and that the council’s decision was one it was lawfully entitled to make.
The campaign’s fundraising page and legal documents remain useful records of the arguments made, the evidence relied on and the eventual outcome:
- CrowdJustice: Save Ealing’s Children’s Centres
- Local Government Lawyer: High Court rejects challenge to proposed closure of children’s centres
- BAILII: R (JO) v London Borough of Ealing [2026] EWHC 886 (Admin)
- Browse Southall Stories campaign reporting →
The old urgent fundraising and action calls should now be read as historical material, not current requests for support.
Ealing Residents Against LTNs
The Low Traffic Neighbourhood disputes of 2020–21 produced one of the most useful official records of resident engagement and council decision-making in recent Ealing history.
Hands Off Tudor Rose
The campaign around the Tudor Rose in Southall remains useful as a record of community organising around a local cultural venue.
Other campaign and civic records
These links are retained because they document community activity, even where Southall Stories did not publish a dedicated report on them.
Community and resident organising
Council-linked initiatives and participation
Not every project described as community activity is independent of the council. These links are kept as part of the wider record of local participation and council-led programmes:
What counts as a campaign here?
Southall Stories is a reporting publication, not a campaign organisation. Coverage may include campaigns that David Marsden has supported or taken part in, but the purpose of this page is to document them accurately over time — including setbacks, court decisions, compromises and outcomes that campaigners did not want.
Where a campaign has ended, the page should say so clearly. Where the position is uncertain or still changing, the reporting should make that clear too.
This page also preserves external campaign links where they add useful context to the local record, including campaigns Southall Stories did not itself cover.
Campaign archive
Older campaigns matter because they show how local issues develop over time: what was promised, who organised, what institutions did in response, and whether anything changed.
Have something to add?
If you were involved in one of these campaigns and think the record is incomplete or inaccurate, you can send corrections, documents, missing archive links or an update to southall@davidmarsden.info.