West Ealing Broadway HMO: Developer Clears Way for Changes

Ealing Council has agreed to take the words “6-storey” and “129 HMO rooms” out of the planning permission for a block of shared rooms at 105-113 Broadway in West Ealing. The developer’s planning agent says the change is needed so that it can ask for further amendments to the scheme.

The council approved the change on 9 November. The decision report says it alters only the wording. The building that was approved stays the same, for now.

Overview

• Where: 105-113 Broadway, West Ealing W13 9BE, on the corner of St James’s Avenue (Walpole ward)
• Approved in June: a six-storey building with 129 en-suite HMO rooms above shops, granted on 26 June 2026
• Changed on 9 November: the storey count and the room count were removed from the description of the permission
• Why: the developer’s agent, Savills, says it is to allow “further amendments to the scheme” through a later application
• Next door: 99-103 Broadway has its own permission for a six-storey block of 86 HMO rooms, so the two sites together were approved for 215 rooms

What changed on 9 November

The application, reference 263767NMA, was a “non-material amendment”. That is a route for small changes that the council can approve without a fresh public consultation.

The permission used to describe “a 6-storey mixed-use building” with “HMO (Sui Generis) accommodation (129 HMO rooms)”. It now describes “a mixed-use building” with “HMO (Sui Generis) accommodation”, with no numbers.

The planning officer accepted that the council’s own protocol says a change to the description “would not normally” count as non-material. The report approved it anyway, because nothing physical changes. It says the amendment:

does not itself authorise any alteration to the approved development, including its height, scale, number of storeys, number of HMO rooms, layout, appearance or use.

The approved drawings and the permission’s conditions still apply. The report says any later change “would require separate consideration through the appropriate statutory procedure”.

Why the developer asked

The application was made by Savills for UK Lux One SPV 12 Ltd, which its cover letter of 12 October names as Luxgrove Capital Partners.

The letter says the change “is required to facilitate further amendments to the scheme in a subsequent S73 (Minor Material Amendment) application”. A section 73 application can vary the approved plans or conditions, and the council would have to decide it in its own right.

The letter does not say what those further amendments would be. It offered a new condition fixing the scheme at 129 rooms, if the council wanted to keep the number under control. The decision report lists two informatives and no new condition.

No section 73 application for the site had appeared on the council’s planning register by 15 November.

What was approved in June

The council granted 254723FUL on 26 June 2026, with a section 106 legal agreement. The officer report describes the site as a three-storey building with shops and offices on the ground floor and artist studios and offices above.

The approved scheme includes:

• a six-storey building replacing it
• 129 HMO rooms on the first to fifth floors, each with its own bathroom
• 321.1 square metres of shop or commercial space on the ground floor
• a 137.4 square metre lobby, co-working area and café, which the report says would be open to the public at certain times
• 78 cycle spaces and no car parking, apart from two disabled bays on Canberra Road

The rooms range from 15.2 to 26.5 square metres. The smallest size makes up 23% of the rooms. That is below the 18 square metre minimum in the guidance the officers used for large shared-living schemes, but the report judged the rooms acceptable because each includes a bathroom, storage and a desk.

Who gets the rooms first

The scheme is not affordable housing in planning terms, and the report says the council did not seek any. Instead the legal agreement sets an order of priority for tenants:

1. NHS workers
2. other key workers living or working in the borough, in health, education, social care, local government, the police and the fire service
3. care leavers and other people who meet income criteria and live or work in the borough

For the first four weeks of marketing, rooms are held for those eligible renters. The report says the operator must also submit rent benchmarking and monitoring, and cannot make operational changes that would “fundamentally alter the affordability-focused nature of the product” without the council’s approval.

The developer will also pay £112,668 under the agreement, including £31,000 for public realm works on the highway, £25,000 for employment and skills, £16,170 for air quality and £14,000 for cycling improvements.

What neighbours said

Site notices went up in January. The report records 26 public comments, all of them objections. They raised the type of housing, a “transient” population, the council’s Article 4 rules on HMOs, pressure on services, antisocial behaviour, parking and the size of the building.

Officers answered that the building would be professionally managed under an operational plan secured by the legal agreement. On size, they compared it with the permission it replaced.

The bigger picture on this stretch of the Broadway

The two plots either side of St James’s Avenue have been through several plans in two years.

The 2024 permission was for conventional flats across both plots. The June officer report calls the new six-storey scheme “significantly reduced in size and scale” compared with it. The council’s draft Local Plan allocates the wider site for homes and town centre uses with an indicative maximum of 12 storeys.

Work on the conditions has been going through since the summer. For 105-113 Broadway the council approved the dust plan on 4 August, the construction logistics plan on 7 August and the drainage strategy on 13 October. The demolition method statement was still pending on the register.

What it means for you

• Nothing about the approved building has changed yet. The height, the room count and the drawings are still those granted in June.
• Watch for the next application. A section 73 application would be published on the planning register under 105-113 Broadway, and residents can comment on it. Our Ealing planning news page tracks the borough’s larger schemes.
• If you are a key worker in Ealing looking for a room, the NHS-first priority applies to the first four weeks of marketing, which the agreement says starts two months before the building is finished.

We will report the next application for the site when it is published.