Councillor Clare Welsby is the group leader of Ealing Green Party. She writes about her concerns over the Court of Appeal deciding not to approve an appeal against the Judicial Review which found in Ealing Council’s favour its decision to close 10 Ealing Children’s Centres.
“The Save Ealing Children’s Centres campaign, claimant and litigation friend (parent), were very disappointed to hear, as was I, now a recently elected councillor, that the appeal against the decision of the judicial review heard in the High Court earlier this year, was not approved to be heard in the Court of Appeal: as were many parents of young children across the borough.
“This decision represents the end of the road in terms of the legal challenge against Ealing Council’s decision in June 2025 to close or repurpose (close by another name) 10 children’s centres. But not the end of the road for holding Ealing Council to account for their promises to improve early help and children’s centres services by this decision.
“Not reaching the bar for an appeal does not invalidate the efforts of the campaign, or the child claimant and their parent, making this challenge and representing themselves and by default thousands of young children and families in Ealing.
“They made the challenge to have their real concerns acknowledged, their voices heard and properly represented. They needed to say that closing so many children’s centres was not the way to improve children’s centres services and the Early Help offer in Ealing; and that the way the Council went about arriving at this decision was flawed. Perhaps not sufficiently so to meet a legal threshold but flawed, nevertheless.
“During the process of defending the council’s proposal, at full council meetings, at scrutiny, and in the High Court the council repeatedly and on record stated that the decision they made would improve these services in Ealing.
“Children’s centres would reach more children particularly those most vulnerable and improve outcomes for young children.
“They would do this through the remaining centres and an outreach in the community even though at the time of the decision an outreach strategy on which the decision was predicated had not yet been properly formulated or published. What was said was that services would improve and this was the way to do it. The council did not want to engage with the campaign group and in total 30 community, voluntary sector organisations and schools to look at other options. The legal route became the only remaining option.
“If Ealing Council had engaged with parents and these community groups when requested to in April 2025 through a connected community approach – a vision of this council, and central to its new council plan 2026-2030 recommended to be approved on 30th June 2026 at full council ; a route to improving early help in Ealing for children under 5 and their families, could have been found without closing so many children’s centres: and the claimant would not have had to resort to a legal challenge and Ealing Council would not have had to spend ‘£109,630 fighting the judicial review’.
“The proposed council plan is based around 3 guiding values including which the plan states ‘are expressed internally through the council’s connected communities’ approach. This is about how the council delivers and focuses on how our employees should go about doing their jobs’ and 9 missions. Their first mission is to ‘Ensure every child has the best start in life and tackle the barriers that hold young people back from fulfilling their dreams.’
“I was alarmed to read that under this mission the 2026/2027 deliverables do not make any mention of early help or children’s centres referring instead to evidence-based parenting and Home Learning Environment (HLE) interventions for families with 3–4-year-olds; establishing one fully operational, accessible and multi-agency Family Hub with integrated services; delivering evidence-based resources and programmes to improve children’s early language, literacy and development, and targeting Family Hub outreach to underserved communities, focussing on increasing the future attainment of good level of development and reducing gaps.
“Parents, as did I, understood that the remaining children’s centres combined with outreach was aimed to fill the gap creating by the closures of so many centres and loss of local access. Perhaps these priorities are contingent on this network of remaining children’s centres combined with universal outreach in the community, but it does not appear so from this plan.
“It is now up to all those in Ealing concerned that families with young children receive the services they need and have been promised – including locally accessible early childhood health services based in many children’s centres that will now close: to hold the council to account.
“They need to be asking questions, providing feedback and requesting evidence of these improvements. Young children and families in Ealing need the council to do better and listen and engage with them properly now.”
