Statement of Community Involvement in Ealing

A Statement of Community Involvement, in the sense that matters when you are making a planning application, is a document that sets out the consultation and engagement you undertook with the local community and other interested parties before you submitted your scheme, and — the part that gives it value — how your proposal changed in response to what you heard. It is a narrative and evidence document: it tells the story of the engagement, and it backs that story with the material that proves it happened, such as copies of leaflets and letters, photographs of exhibitions, lists of who was consulted, the questions asked, the comments received, and a clear account of the changes made and the points that could not be accommodated and why.

It goes by several names, which is where confusion creeps in. Some councils and consultants call it a Consultation Statement or Community Engagement Statement; the government's planning practice guidance and much of the industry refer to the applicant's document as a Statement of Community Involvement; Ealing's own material uses the phrase Consultation and Involvement Statement for the document an applicant submits describing their engagement. These are the same thing. Do not confuse any of them with the council's own adopted Statement of Community Involvement, which is the statutory policy document Ealing prepared to explain how it, the council, will involve people in planning — that is the standard your applicant statement is measured against, not the statement itself.

The document is not a legal formality for the sake of it, and it is not merely a public-relations exercise. Its real function is threefold. First, it demonstrates to the council that you have engaged the community early and genuinely, as national policy and Ealing's own SCI ask you to do on schemes of any size. Second, it improves the scheme, because meaningful engagement surfaces local knowledge, concerns and constraints that a design team working from plans alone will miss. Third, it is a material consideration in the determination of the application — a well-run, well-documented consultation that shaped the scheme is a positive weight in the planning balance, and it takes the sting out of objections by showing that concerns were heard and addressed rather than ignored.

For a residential applicant in Ealing, the practical upshot is that a Statement of Community Involvement is both something you produce and something you use. You produce it as a required or expected document on a larger scheme. But you use the engagement behind it, from the very start, to design a scheme that neighbours can live with and the council can approve — which is exactly why Crown treats the consultation as part of the design process, not a report bolted on at the end.

Whether your application must be accompanied by a Statement of Community Involvement depends on the scale and nature of the development, and on the local validation list — the checklist of documents Ealing requires for a valid application. For a straightforward householder extension or a single dwelling, a formal SCI is not normally required; the council's own statutory publicity (neighbour notification and, where relevant, a site notice) does the community-involvement work, and the applicant is not expected to run a consultation. As the scheme grows in size and impact, the expectation of pre-application community engagement — and of a statement recording it — rises steeply.

The clearest trigger is 'major' development, a term defined in the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015. For residential schemes, development is 'major' where ten or more dwellings are proposed, or where the site area is 0.5 hectares or more. For non-residential development it is major where 1,000 square metres or more of floorspace is created, or the site is 1 hectare or more. Major schemes carry a longer statutory determination period (thirteen weeks rather than eight), attract more publicity, and are the schemes on which councils, including Ealing, most clearly expect an applicant to have consulted the community and to submit a statement demonstrating it.

Below the strict 'major' threshold there is a large middle ground of 'larger' or more sensitive schemes where a Statement of Community Involvement is strongly advisable even if it is not rigidly demanded — a scheme of several flats, a contentious backland development, a tall or bulky building near lower-rise neighbours, a redevelopment that changes the character of a street, or any proposal likely to attract significant local interest. Ealing's approach, set out in its adopted Statement of Community Involvement, is that the level of consultation appropriate to a scheme varies with its scale, nature and impact; pre-application discussion with the council helps to establish what is expected in a given case. The safe rule is that if your scheme is big enough or sensitive enough to worry the neighbours, it is big enough to warrant genuine engagement and a statement recording it.

The practical way to settle the question for your specific scheme is to check Ealing's current validation requirements and, on anything of scale, to raise community engagement at pre-application stage. We do both as a matter of course: we confirm whether a Statement of Community Involvement is a validation requirement for your particular application, and we advise on the right level of engagement for the scheme's size and sensitivity — because under-consulting a scheme that needed it, and over-engineering consultation on a scheme that did not, are both avoidable errors.

Community involvement in planning is not an optional courtesy; it is woven through the statutory framework, and understanding that framework is what tells you how much engagement a scheme needs and what a statement has to show. The foundation is section 18 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, which requires every local planning authority to prepare and keep up to date a Statement of Community Involvement — the council's own adopted policy document setting out how it will involve the community both in preparing planning policy and in dealing with planning applications. This is the section under which Ealing produced its adopted SCI, and it is the origin of the whole regime.

Sitting alongside it is Article 15 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015, which sets the minimum statutory publicity a council must give to a planning application once it is submitted. In broad terms Article 15 requires neighbour notification and/or a site notice for most applications, and for major development, development affecting a conservation area or a listed building, or development requiring an environmental statement, a notice in a local newspaper as well. This publicity opens a consultation period — normally 21 days — during which anyone can comment. Article 15 is about the council's publicity after submission; it is separate from, and additional to, the applicant's own pre-application engagement recorded in a Statement of Community Involvement.

National planning policy reinforces the point. The National Planning Policy Framework encourages early engagement with communities and states that good-quality pre-application discussion and community engagement improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the planning system and produce better development. The government's planning practice guidance on consultation and pre-decision matters explains how councils publicise applications, how the Statement of Community Involvement fits in, and why applicants for larger schemes are encouraged to consult the community before they submit. Where an applicant has undertaken pre-application engagement, validation checklists commonly ask for a statement describing what was done and how the proposal responded to it.

In London a further layer applies, and it is a strong one. The London Plan 2021 opens with the Good Growth objective GG1, which requires those involved in planning and development to encourage early and inclusive engagement with local communities in the development of proposals, and to seek to involve communities in the different stages of the planning process. Design policy D3, the design-led approach to optimising site capacity, likewise expects meaningful engagement with communities on the design of significant schemes. For a larger scheme in Ealing, therefore, the expectation of genuine community engagement flows from national policy, from the London Plan, and from Ealing's own adopted SCI all at once — which is why a serious Statement of Community Involvement is close to indispensable on schemes of scale.

To understand why community involvement carries real weight in Ealing, it helps to understand the borough and the people who comment on its planning applications. Ealing earned the title 'Queen of the Suburbs' — a phrase in use by around 1902 and associated with the borough surveyor Charles Jones, who did so much to shape the town — because of its leafy, spacious, garden-rich residential streets. It was developed and marketed as a country town near London: well connected by rail, but green, generous and orderly, with tree-lined roads and substantial houses set in real gardens. That character is fiercely valued by residents, and it means larger schemes that threaten the established grain, density and greenery attract organised, articulate and determined local objection. Consultation is not a formality here; it is how you find out, early, what the neighbourhood will fight.

The borough's landmarks reinforce its sense of place and its heritage sensitivities. Pitzhanger Manor, remodelled by the architect Sir John Soane in the early 1800s as his own country villa, sits in the beautifully landscaped, Grade II-listed Walpole Park at the heart of Ealing, opened to the public in 1901. Ealing Studios, one of the oldest continuously working film studios in the world and the home of the classic Ealing comedies, has been making films here since the early twentieth century. Beyond the town, the borough stretches from the Acton and Chiswick edge in the east through Ealing and Hanwell to Southall, Northolt and Greenford in the west, taking in the Grand Union Canal, Horsenden Hill and the Brent River Park — a borough that has always prized its green settings and its distinctive, well-made environment, and whose residents expect to be asked before it changes.

Above all, Ealing has Brentham Garden Suburb — an Edwardian garden suburb built between about 1901 and 1915, one of the earliest and most influential planned garden suburbs in the country, designated a conservation area and protected by a comprehensive Article 4 direction that removes virtually all permitted development rights so that even small external changes need permission. Across the borough there are around 29 conservation areas covering Victorian streets, Edwardian suburbs, village greens and interwar estates, alongside well-organised residents' associations, amenity societies and civic groups. When a larger scheme comes forward near any of them, these groups are exactly the consultees a Statement of Community Involvement has to engage — and engaging them well, early, is what turns potential objectors into people who at least feel they were heard.

At the same time, Ealing is a borough under real growth pressure, which is the other half of the consultation story. The regeneration around Southall, the town-centre intensification around the Elizabeth line stations at Ealing Broadway, West Ealing, Hanwell, Southall and Acton, and the pressure for higher-density housing on brownfield and town-centre sites all mean that larger schemes are being brought forward across the borough. Where growth meets a community that values its character, community involvement is where the two are reconciled — or where they collide. A scheme that consulted early, listened and adapted stands a far better chance in this borough than one that did not, and the Statement of Community Involvement is the document that proves which kind of scheme yours is.

Ealing Council adopted its current Statement of Community Involvement in 2022, updating the earlier 2011 version. This is the statutory document, prepared under section 18 of the 2004 Act, that sets out the council's objectives and standards for community involvement in both development planning (preparing the Local Plan and other policy) and development management (deciding planning applications). It is the rulebook against which your applicant statement is judged, so a scheme that wants to demonstrate proper engagement should be built around what Ealing's own SCI says it expects. We work to the current adopted version whenever we advise on a scheme, and confirm its status at the time, because a council can review and republish its SCI.

On planning applications, Ealing's SCI explains how the council itself publicises and consults on applications. Those directly affected — typically adjoining and nearby occupiers — are notified of the receipt of an application and given a period, normally 21 days, in which to comment, with that period running from the date of the site notice or the letter of notification. Depending on the type and scale of the application, publicity may also include a site notice displayed near the application site and, for major development or development affecting a conservation area or listed building, a notice in the local press. This is the council's Article 15 publicity, described in its own document, and it is the baseline of community involvement that applies to every application over and above anything the applicant does.

For the applicant's own engagement, Ealing's SCI takes a proportionate, scale-related approach. It describes consultation methods along a spectrum — broadly, informative methods that tell large numbers of people what is proposed and open a dialogue; consultative methods that actively seek people's views; and engaging methods that involve genuine partnership working, with stakeholders taking an active role in discussion and negotiation. The greater the scale and impact of a scheme, the further up that spectrum the council expects an applicant to go. The SCI also makes clear that for major development proposals the council will help promoters identify the groups, bodies and others they should be consulting at the pre-application and application stages, and that the appropriate level of consultation is best settled through pre-application discussion.

The document that captures all of this on the applicant's side is the Consultation and Involvement Statement — Ealing's term for the statement an applicant submits with a larger application to describe the engagement carried out and how the proposal responded. In substance this is the applicant's Statement of Community Involvement. Where community engagement has been undertaken, the validation expectation is that the application is accompanied by such a statement explaining the engagement and how the scheme evolved in response. We prepare that statement to sit squarely within Ealing's adopted SCI framework — using the level of engagement the scheme's scale calls for, consulting the groups the council would expect, and documenting it in the way the council wants to see.

It is tempting to see community consultation as a cost and a delay — another document to produce, another set of meetings to hold, another opportunity for people to object. In truth, done properly and early, it is one of the highest-return activities on a larger scheme, and the reasons are practical rather than pious. The first is design quality: local people know things about a site and its surroundings that no survey reveals — where the light falls, which trees matter, how the traffic behaves at school run, which views are treasured, where the flooding was last time, what the last scheme that failed got wrong. Engagement surfaces all of that while the design can still absorb it, producing a better scheme than a design team could reach on its own.

The second reason is risk reduction. A larger scheme in Ealing that lands on the neighbours as a surprise generates objections in volume, and volume matters: a torrent of objections is more likely to push an application to the planning committee rather than a delegated officer decision, to harden councillors' positions, and to slow and complicate the determination. Consultation that engages neighbours before submission — that lets them see the scheme, raise concerns and see some of those concerns answered — takes much of the heat out of the process. It rarely converts every objector, but it changes the tenor of the response from ambush to dialogue, and a case officer facing a scheme that plainly listened is in a far easier position to recommend approval.

The third reason is that the engagement, and the statement recording it, are a material consideration in the planning decision. Where an applicant has consulted genuinely and adapted the scheme, that is a positive weight in the balance, and it directly rebuts the common objection that 'nobody asked us' or 'the developer didn't listen'. A well-evidenced Statement of Community Involvement lets the officer's report say, truthfully, that the community was engaged, that concerns were considered, and that the scheme responded — which is exactly the narrative that gets contentious schemes through committee. Consultation you can prove is worth far more than consultation you merely assert.

The fourth reason is simply that policy expects it. With the London Plan's Good Growth objective, the NPPF's encouragement of early engagement, and Ealing's own adopted SCI all pointing the same way, an applicant who brings a larger scheme forward with no community engagement is starting on the back foot and inviting the criticism that they ignored the framework. Meeting the expectation is not just defensive; it is the sensible, value-adding way to develop a scheme of any size in a borough that cares as much about its character as Ealing does.

A Statement of Community Involvement that carries weight is not a glossy leaflet of reassurances; it is a clear, honest, evidenced account of the engagement and its effect on the scheme. At its core it should set out five things: who you consulted and why those consultees were chosen; how and when you engaged them, with the methods described and dated; what they told you, reported fairly and in full — including the criticism; how the scheme changed in response, point by point; and where concerns could not be accommodated, why not. That last element matters as much as the changes: a statement that pretends everyone was satisfied is not believed, whereas one that explains honestly which points were taken on board and which could not be, and why, reads as credible.

The consultee list should reflect the scheme's context and the groups Ealing's SCI would expect to see engaged. For a larger residential scheme that typically means immediate and nearby neighbours; the relevant residents' associations and amenity or civic societies; the ward councillors; any local business or community groups affected; and, where the site touches a conservation area, a heritage or amenity group with an interest in it. On the largest schemes it may also include the Greater London Authority and statutory bodies. Showing that the right people were approached — not just a token mailshot — is part of what makes the statement convincing.

The methods section should describe the engagement concretely and prove it happened. On a scheme of scale that usually means a combination: a leaflet or letter to surrounding properties announcing the proposal and the consultation; a public exhibition or drop-in event where people can see the plans and speak to the team; an online presence — a project website or webpage with the material and a feedback route — which has become standard and widens reach; and often a feedback form, comment cards or a survey to capture responses in a usable form. The statement should give the dates, the numbers (how many leaflets, how many attendees, how many responses), and include the material itself as appendices — copies of the leaflet, photographs of the exhibition, screenshots of the webpage, the feedback form — so the council can see it was real.

The heart of the document is the analysis and response — the 'you said, we did'. This should summarise the feedback by theme (for example: height and massing, daylight and privacy, parking and traffic, design and materials, amenity space, construction impact), report honestly how many raised each concern and what they said, and then set out precisely how the scheme responded to each: the storey removed, the setback increased, the parking revised, the elevation reworked, the trees retained — or the reasoned explanation of why a point could not be met. This is where the document earns its place as a material consideration, because it demonstrates a genuine loop from engagement to design change rather than a one-way broadcast.

We treat community engagement as part of designing the scheme, not as a report produced after the design is fixed, because that is the only way it delivers value. Our starting point on any larger Ealing scheme is a consultation strategy proportionate to the scheme: we identify the consultees the council and the context require, choose the methods that fit the scale and the neighbourhood, set a timetable that puts the engagement early enough to shape the design, and — where the scheme warrants it — agree the approach with Ealing at pre-application stage so the council's expectations are built in from the outset rather than discovered later.

We then produce the engagement material and run the engagement. That typically means a clear, honest leaflet or letter to the surrounding area explaining the proposal and how to comment; a public exhibition or drop-in event, staffed by the design team, where people can see the plans at a stage when they can still influence them and ask questions face to face; a project webpage carrying the same material with an online feedback route, which reaches people who cannot attend in person; and a structured feedback mechanism — comment cards, a form or a short survey — that captures responses in a form we can analyse. We keep careful records throughout: dates, distribution numbers, attendance, and every comment received.

The crucial step is what happens next: we analyse the feedback, feed it back into the design, and change the scheme where the response justifies it. This is the part that separates real engagement from theatre. We sit down with the comments, group them by theme, identify the genuine and recurring concerns, and work with you on which can be accommodated — a reduction in height, an increased setback, a reworked elevation, revised parking, better daylight to a neighbour, retained trees — and which cannot, with clear reasons. Where the scheme changes, we can often show the community the revised proposal, closing the loop and building goodwill before the application is even submitted.

Finally we write the Statement of Community Involvement itself: the clear, evidenced, honest account of who we engaged, how, what they said and how the scheme responded, with the material appended and a 'you said, we did' schedule at its heart. Because we designed the scheme, ran the engagement and wrote the statement as one continuous process, the document is not a retrofitted justification — it is a truthful record of a design that genuinely responded to its community, which is exactly what a case officer and a planning committee can rely on.

Ealing's adopted SCI describes consultation along a spectrum from informative, through consultative, to engaging, and the right point on that spectrum depends on the scale and sensitivity of the scheme. Choosing the methods well matters, because over-consulting a modest scheme wastes time and money while under-consulting a large or contentious one leaves you exposed. We match the toolkit to the job rather than applying a fixed template, and we can justify the level chosen by reference to the scheme's size and impact, which is itself part of a defensible statement.

The informative end of the spectrum is about telling people what is proposed and opening a channel for response: a leaflet or letter to surrounding properties, notices in prominent local places, and a project webpage with the plans and a way to comment. These methods reach a lot of people and are the baseline for any scheme large enough to need a statement. On their own they suit smaller 'larger' schemes where the impact is real but contained, and they form the foundation for the more active methods on bigger schemes.

The consultative end actively seeks views and gives people a genuine opportunity to influence the scheme: a public exhibition or drop-in event with the design team present, a feedback form or survey, and often meetings with residents' associations, amenity societies and ward councillors. This is the level most major residential schemes in Ealing should reach, because it produces the two-way dialogue and the documented feedback that a credible Statement of Community Involvement depends on, and it is the level at which a scheme really benefits from local knowledge.

The engaging end involves genuine partnership working, with stakeholders taking an active role in shaping the proposal — workshops, design charrettes, iterative rounds of consultation, and continuing dialogue through the design's evolution. This level suits the largest, most sensitive or most strategic schemes — a significant redevelopment, a tall building near a conservation area, a scheme with real community stakes — where the council, and often the GLA, expect deep and sustained engagement. We advise on which level a given scheme genuinely needs, so the effort matches the risk and the statement reflects an appropriate, proportionate process.

A Statement of Community Involvement does not stand alone; it is one of a suite of documents that together make the case for a larger scheme, and it works best when it is consistent with all of them. The most obvious relationship is with the design and access statement and the planning statement: the SCI shows that the community was engaged and that the scheme responded, while the design and access statement explains the resulting design and the planning statement sets it against policy. When these documents tell one coherent story — engagement led to design changes, which the design statement explains and the planning statement justifies against Ealing's Local Plan and the London Plan — the application reads as considered and defensible.

The SCI also connects to the technical assessments that a larger scheme requires, because those assessments often answer the very concerns the community raised. If neighbours worried about daylight and privacy, the daylight and sunlight assessment addresses it; if they worried about traffic and parking, the transport statement does; if they worried about trees, the arboricultural report does; if they worried about flooding, the flood risk assessment and drainage strategy do. A strong Statement of Community Involvement can point to each of these as evidence that a raised concern was not merely acknowledged but rigorously examined — turning the technical documents into part of the community-response narrative.

It fits, too, with the statutory publicity the council carries out after submission under Article 15 — the neighbour notification, site notice and, on major schemes, press notice that open the formal 21-day consultation. The applicant's pre-application engagement and the council's formal consultation are complementary: the first shapes the scheme before it is fixed, the second gives everyone a formal opportunity to comment on the submitted proposal. A scheme that consulted well before submission tends to weather the formal consultation far better, because the neighbours have already seen it and the surprises have already been absorbed.

Because we prepare the whole application — the drawings, the design and access statement, the planning statement, the technical assessments and the Statement of Community Involvement — as a single coordinated package, these relationships are built in rather than left to chance. The engagement informs the design, the design informs the statements, and the statements cross-reference one another, so the case officer receives a self-consistent application in which the community story, the design and the policy case all reinforce each other.

The most damaging mistake is consulting too late — running an exhibition or sending a leaflet after the design is essentially fixed, so there is nothing left for the community to influence. A statement that records engagement of that kind fools nobody: neighbours experience it as a done deal being presented to them, the feedback changes nothing, and the 'you said, we did' section is empty or dishonest. Councillors and case officers see through it immediately, and it can be worse than no consultation at all, because it looks like an attempt to manufacture the appearance of engagement. Consultation only works, and a statement is only worth writing, when the engagement happens while the scheme can still change.

The second mistake is a one-way broadcast that never closes the loop. Telling people what is proposed, collecting their comments, and then submitting the scheme unchanged with a statement that lists the comments but shows no response is not engagement; it is a mailing exercise. The value of a Statement of Community Involvement is entirely in the response — the demonstrable link between what people said and what changed. A statement that reports feedback but ignores it invites the very objection it was meant to defuse: that the developer heard the community and pressed on regardless.

A third mistake is consulting the wrong people, or too few of them — a token distribution to a handful of immediate neighbours that misses the residents' association, the amenity society, the ward councillors and the interested community groups that Ealing's SCI would expect to see engaged. A narrow consultation produces a narrow, unrepresentative response and a statement that is easily attacked for having engaged nobody who mattered. The consultee list has to reflect the scheme's real catchment and the groups that genuinely have an interest.

The fourth family of mistakes is about honesty and evidence. Statements that airbrush the criticism, that claim consensus where there was conflict, or that assert engagement without appending the leaflets, the exhibition photographs, the attendance numbers and the feedback are not believed. A credible Statement of Community Involvement reports the opposition fairly, quantifies the response, appends the proof, and explains honestly what could and could not be accommodated. We build every statement to survive scrutiny — by the case officer, by objectors, and if necessary by a planning committee or an inspector — precisely because a statement that cannot survive scrutiny is a liability rather than an asset.

A Statement of Community Involvement is one of several documents a major residential application in Ealing typically has to submit, and it works alongside them. The design and access statement is usually required on major schemes and in conservation areas, and it explains the design rationale and how the scheme responds to its context — including, ideally, how it responded to consultation. The planning statement sets the scheme against national, London Plan and Ealing policy, making the case that it is acceptable in principle and in detail. Between them, these two documents and the SCI carry much of the narrative of a larger application.

Then come the technical assessments, driven by the scheme and the site. A transport statement or transport assessment covers trip generation, access and parking; a daylight and sunlight assessment addresses impacts on neighbours and the quality of the new homes; an arboricultural report and tree survey deal with trees, which are abundant and often protected in Ealing; a flood risk assessment and drainage strategy address surface water and any flood-zone constraint; an air quality, noise or contamination assessment is provided where the site or its surroundings demand it. On major schemes an energy and sustainability statement demonstrating compliance with the London Plan energy hierarchy is generally required, and larger or more sensitive schemes may need an environmental statement.

Where a scheme reaches the relevant scale, affordable housing and planning obligations come into play. Major residential schemes engage the London Plan and Ealing's affordable-housing policies and are usually the subject of a Section 106 agreement securing affordable units or a contribution, along with other obligations, before permission is granted. A financial viability assessment may be needed where the full affordable-housing requirement is said not to be deliverable. And the Community Infrastructure Levy — the Mayoral CIL, and Ealing's own borough CIL — applies to the net new floorspace a scheme creates.

We prepare or commission and coordinate this whole suite so it is internally consistent, with the Statement of Community Involvement woven through it: the concerns raised in consultation are addressed in the technical documents, the design changes made in response are explained in the design and access statement, and the policy case in the planning statement reflects the engaged, adapted scheme. A coordinated package in which the community story and the technical case reinforce each other is materially more likely to be approved than a set of documents that do not talk to one another.

The cost of community engagement and the Statement of Community Involvement that records it depends on the scale of the scheme and the depth of engagement it needs — a modest 'larger' scheme with a leaflet, a webpage and a single drop-in is a very different exercise from a major redevelopment requiring exhibitions, workshops, iterative consultation and sustained dialogue with amenity groups and the GLA. We scope the engagement to the scheme and quote a clear fee for our part before any work begins, so you know the cost of the consultation and the statement up front, and so the level of engagement is a deliberate, justified choice rather than an open-ended commitment.

There are direct costs to the engagement itself over and above our fee: printing and distributing leaflets to the surrounding area, hiring and staffing an exhibition or drop-in venue, building and hosting a project webpage, and producing feedback material. These are usually modest against the value of a larger scheme and against the cost of a refusal, an appeal or a scheme mauled at committee, but they are real and we set them out at the start so there are no surprises. On the largest schemes, a more sustained programme of engagement is a more significant line, which is exactly why the level should be matched to the scheme.

Separately, budget for the council's own charges. Ealing operates a pre-application advice service, charged on a scale that rises with the size of the scheme (strategic, major and minor), and using it is almost always worthwhile on a larger scheme, both to settle the design direction and to agree the expected level of community engagement. The planning application fee itself is set nationally and rises steeply for major development, charged per dwelling; and on major schemes there are the downstream costs of Section 106 obligations, affordable housing and the Community Infrastructure Levy on the net new floorspace. We set out the likely fees and levies for your specific scheme alongside our own fee so you can budget the whole exercise.

On timescales, the engagement needs to sit early enough in the programme to shape the design, which means building it into the project timeline from the outset rather than squeezing it in before submission. A typical engagement programme — preparing the material, running the exhibition and online consultation, allowing a comment window, analysing the feedback and revising the scheme — runs over several weeks to a couple of months depending on scale. The application that follows is a major application, so Ealing's statutory determination target is thirteen weeks rather than eight, and negotiation, consultation responses, committee scheduling or an agreed extension of time commonly lengthen that. We give you a realistic overall programme, with the engagement built in, at the start.

The process starts with feasibility and strategy. We assess the site and the scheme, establish the designations that apply (conservation area, Article 4 direction, tree constraints, flood zones, site allocations and the town-centre or growth context), and — because the scheme is of scale — plan the community engagement alongside the design from the outset. On a larger scheme we usually recommend pre-application advice from Ealing at this point, both to test the design direction and, importantly, to agree the level and form of community engagement the council will expect, so that the eventual Statement of Community Involvement is built to satisfy the council's own SCI.

We then run the engagement while the design is still capable of changing — the leaflet or letter, the exhibition or drop-in, the project webpage and the feedback mechanism — and we analyse the response and feed it back into the design. This is the stage that gives the whole exercise its value, and it happens before the application is submitted, not after. Where the scheme changes materially in response, we can show the community the revised proposal, closing the loop. In parallel we develop the full application: the drawings, the design and access statement, the planning statement, the technical assessments and the Statement of Community Involvement itself.

When the scheme and the engagement are complete, we submit the application to Ealing Council through the Planning Portal with the full document suite, and it is validated against the local list before it is registered. The council then carries out its own statutory publicity under Article 15 — neighbour notification, a site notice and, on a major scheme, a press notice — opening the formal consultation period, normally 21 days, during which anyone can comment. A scheme that consulted well beforehand tends to come through this formal consultation far more smoothly, because the neighbours have already seen it and much of the concern has already been addressed on the drawings.

During determination the case officer assesses the scheme against the development plan, weighs the consultation responses, and — on a major or contentious scheme — usually takes the application to the planning committee with a recommendation. This is where a strong Statement of Community Involvement pays for itself: it lets the officer's report and the committee see that the community was genuinely engaged and that the scheme responded, which is exactly the narrative that carries a larger scheme through. We manage the application through the process — responding to the officer, addressing objections, negotiating amendments and the Section 106, and, where a scheme goes to committee, supporting it there — and, once permission is granted, into the discharge of conditions and delivery.

Consider a backland development of several new homes behind an existing terrace — one of the most contested scheme types in Ealing, and one that reliably alarms the surrounding neighbours whose gardens and rear windows are affected. A scheme like this that lands without warning generates a wall of objections about overlooking, loss of the green interior of the block, access down a narrow drive, and out-of-keeping form, and it is very likely to be refused. The same scheme, preceded by genuine engagement — a leaflet and letter to the affected neighbours, a drop-in where they can see how the homes are set out and screened, and design changes in response to the daylight and privacy concerns — arrives at committee with a Statement of Community Involvement showing that the very issues neighbours raised were examined and answered. It is a completely different application.

Or take a block of flats on a redundant or under-used site near one of the borough's town centres, where the London Plan and Ealing's emerging plan direct higher-density housing. Here the community's concerns are usually about height and massing relative to lower-rise neighbours, the effect on daylight and outlook, parking and traffic, and the character of the street. Early engagement lets the design respond — a storey removed at a sensitive edge, a set-back upper floor, a reworked elevation, a parking and cycle strategy that answers the traffic fear — and the resulting Statement of Community Involvement demonstrates a scheme that optimised its site through a design-led, consultative approach exactly as London Plan policy D3 envisages. That is a strong position from which to seek permission for growth in a character-conscious borough.

Consider, too, a scheme on the edge of, or adjoining, one of Ealing's conservation areas — Brentham, or one of the many Victorian and Edwardian areas across the borough. Here the amenity and heritage societies are organised and vocal, and their view carries weight. Engaging them early, showing them the proposal, and adapting the materials, the scale, the roofline or the boundary treatment in response is often the difference between a society that objects strenuously and one that at least accepts the scheme was thoughtfully handled. The Statement of Community Involvement records that dialogue, and it sits alongside the heritage statement to show that the scheme's effect on the area's character was taken seriously.

In each of these, the pattern is the same: the engagement is where the local knowledge and the local objections surface, the design is where they are answered, and the Statement of Community Involvement is where that whole loop is proved to the council. The document is not what makes the scheme acceptable — the design changes do that — but it is what lets the council and the committee see that the scheme is acceptable and that the community was properly involved, which on a larger scheme in this borough is often decisive.

Crown Architecture designs and delivers larger residential schemes across Ealing and the surrounding boroughs, and we handle the community engagement and the Statement of Community Involvement as an integral part of that work, not as a report subcontracted to a separate firm after the design is done. Because the same team designs the scheme, plans and runs the consultation, analyses the feedback and writes the statement, the engagement genuinely shapes the design and the statement is a truthful record of that — which is exactly what makes it carry weight with a case officer and a committee.

We know the Ealing context specifically: the borough's spacious, garden-rich character and how fiercely residents defend it; the many conservation areas and Article 4 directions, Brentham foremost among them, and the organised amenity and civic societies attached to them; the growth pressure around Southall and the Elizabeth line town centres, and how the London Plan and the emerging Local Plan direct it; and the council's adopted 2022 Statement of Community Involvement and what it expects of an applicant. We use that knowledge to design engagement that reaches the people who matter, in the way the council wants to see, at a level proportionate to the scheme.

We are also straightforward to work with. We scope the engagement to the scheme and quote a clear fee before we start; we recommend and use Ealing's pre-application service to agree the design direction and the expected level of consultation; we run the engagement early, while the design can still change; and we write a Statement of Community Involvement that reports the feedback honestly, shows the design changes clearly, appends the evidence, and survives scrutiny. And because we prepare the whole application as a coordinated package, the community story, the design and the policy case reinforce one another.

Finally, we stay with the scheme through determination. We manage the application through Ealing's process — responding to the case officer, addressing objections, negotiating amendments and the Section 106, and supporting the scheme at committee where it goes there — and once permission is granted we carry it into the discharge of conditions and delivery. If you are bringing a larger residential scheme forward in Ealing and want it to arrive with the community genuinely engaged and the engagement properly documented, send us the site and what you have in mind, and we will tell you honestly what level of consultation it needs and how to get there. The first conversation, and a feasibility view, are free.