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Your Voice, Your Southall

Your Voice, Your Town is building on the community wealth that already exists in Southall. It’s bringing people, voluntary and faith groups, schools and businesses together to work on the issues that are most important to them. Local people were asked to vote for their important issue, or town priority, where they want to focus their skills, resources and funding.

The choices were Clean and Pleasant Area, Community Facilities, Supporting Community Life – young people, civic life, community activity, Feeling Safe, Development, Cost of Living, Job Opportunities, Pedestrian Access.

Southall's Town Priority

Clean and Pleasant Area

Southall will have £120,000* and the support of local skills, resources and expertise, to invest in community-led projects, with a focus on the chosen priority.

*Budgets are set by size of town population

Collective Statements & Emerging Ideas from the community

In February people were invited to participate in a workshop at the Young Adult Centre, Park View Road, Southall, where they shared their thoughts on what a ‘Clean and Pleasant Area’ means to them and collaborated to reach a shared understanding of their town priority.

Their collective statements will be shared with Southall’s Town Team, to help set the criteria for future community-led projects. Residents then worked together to think of project ideas that met their collective goals. The emerging ideas offer a glimpse of the type of projects people are enthusiastic about leading and participating in.

Engage and Educate - A Cleaner Southall Together incorporating Green mobile waste collection

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Clear, clean, engage, educate, prevent Addressing the waste issues immediately through the green mobile waste collection proposal whilst embedding education and prevention in schools and local communities region by region in a rollout scheme through neighbourhoods. SUSTAINABILITY! For everyone, by everyone

“We focus on solutions, such as implementing systems to keep our area clean and tidy for all residents”

The Big Southall Uplift

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A clean, safe, and accessible environment is essential. Enforcement measures, educational initiatives targeting flytippers, and an improved system for cleaning and offering affordable bulky waste collection are necessary steps. This will benefit residents, visitors, and business associates alike.

“We want our everyday spaces to reflect the cleaner, greener spaces we visit elsewhere. We want to change community members’ perceptions and behaviours about fly tipping and the lack of bins, from the top down and the grass roots up, to make our parks and green spaces reach their full potential.”

Southall Living Walls

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Creating living walls and green roofs helps clean the air and replicate green spaces.

Benefits:

  1. Attractive space
  2. Pride of place
  3. Volunteer support
  4. Safer gathering areas

Target Audience:

  1. Southall community
  2. Visitors
  3. Business owners
  4. Freeholders
  5. Anyone with lungs

“Green open spaces with low volumes of human traffic leads to clean and pleasant areas. Development of many high-rise buildings is taking over the green open spaces.”

Together for Southall

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Bringing people together in public spaces

  • Bandstand for music and culture
  • Educational community programmes
  • 'Keep Britain Tidy' week with litter picking
  • Youth Festival with pop-up events

Connecting to create clean, pleasant areas for young people, parents, and everyone

“Some improvements but more education and enforcement to create pride in the great place we live in and others visit. Funds should be distributed fairly across all parks.”

Flytipping, Enforcement and Education

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Building a culture against flytipping, encouraging our communities to take pride in maintaining cleaner environments beyond our green spaces. Together, the residents and communities of Southall can create a brighter, greener future.

“Respect for self and community results in cleaner, more attractive, safer spaces where people want to come together to help each other, fostering a sense of pride”

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Southall's Community

If you live, work or study in Southall, then you know it’s not just another town, it’s an experience. Every year thousands of people visit Southall to taste global culinary delights, particularly the flavours of southern Asia and eastern Africa, shop for south Asian traditional clothing and accessories and, depending on the time of year, take part in one of the many events that celebrate the faith, culture and traditions that make up Southall’s communities. All of this and more could not happen without you, a community of people shaped by your histories and experience of migration. 

Your roots have been established and connections have been made through your faith, culture and traditions, which are ever present in each corner, and reflected within diverse, often iconic, places of worship across Southall. Since the 1950s, people have come together in tough times to fight for their rights, creating well-known community groups like Southall Black Sisters and The Monitoring Group.

Throughout the year, the town hosts a variety of events, both religious and secular. From Pongal, Vaisakhi, Eid ul Fitr, Eid ul Adha, and Easter, to the Indian wedding season, summer cricket, Diwali, and Guru Nanak’s birth in autumn, there's always something happening. And don’t forget Hallowe'en, Guy Fawkes, and Christmas! 

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Southall knows how to have a great time with community sports events, Let’s Go Southall, the social movement that enables people to keep themselves healthy and enjoy their busy lives. Established groups like Mael Gael hold their activities in Norwood Hall, and others use the refurbished Dominion Centre, and the Open Havelock Community Centre, and young people have the Young Adults Centre. At the same time Southall provides a compassionate support network in and through churches, gurdwaras, mandirs, masjids and the secular community organisations that are part of Southall Community Alliance and others like GOSAD, helping people throughout their time of need.

The recent addition of the Elizabeth Line has made Southall more accessible, and it’s quickly become an attractive destination, especially with younger people moving in. The new linear park in The Green Quarter offers a space for relaxation, complemented by the OPEN Southall community facility near the Paddington arm of the Grand Union Canal, cared for by volunteers of the Canal and River Trust.

During the workshop, local residents shared their knowledge of Southall and the diverse activities they participate in. This exchange fostered a deeper sense of connection among attendees, both with each other and with their community of Southall.

If you are part of a voluntary or community group, residents association or faith space that delivers an activity in Southall and you want more people to know about it, you can register with Do Something Good to include your group’s activity in the Community Support Directory.

Your Voice, Your Role

Are you over-18 and available to join a friendly group of people, that meet up regularly to help guide the activities and decisions on how local resources and budgets can support you town's chosen priorities?

If you have the time and you see yourself as someone who is good at solving problems, have ideas about how to improve your local area, appreciate the views of others and can listen with empathy then your local Town Team needs your support.

I want to sign up for the Town Team

Alternatively, if you want to be kept up to date on what is happening locally in your town, such as future town events, projects and activities which you might want to know more about and get involved in, then you have the option to keep in touch.

I want to stay in touch

What's Next?

We learned about priorities, projects and aspirations from many people in the town. Those unable to attend the workshop, such as parents/carers, non-native English speakers, and people under 18 can also share their thoughts. Inclusive conversations will help the Southall’s Town Team projects benefit all communities and ensure everyone feels seen and heard. These conversations will be happening between March and April 2025.

In May, the initial Town Team workshops will take place to collaborate with those who have expressed interest in joining. The purpose is to identify Town Team members, establish shared values, define roles and responsibilities, and plan future activities. This event date will be communicated exclusively to individuals who have registered their interest.

Get Involved with Community Conversations in Southall

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Building Community Resilience

Preparing for major emergencies

Ealing and Hounslow CVS, Ealing Council and The British Red Cross are hosting community resilience workshops across our borough.

Residents, community groups, businesses and the faith sector are invited to join us to prepare for responding to emergencies together.

Book your ticket to get involved
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African and Caribbean Research Advisory Group

Shape and influence the health and wellbeing agenda for older people from African and Caribbean communities

We are looking for people with direct lived experienced as patients, carers, relatives or friends of older people using health and social care services to be part of our research advisory group.

Be part of our research group
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Southall Grand Union Canal Wellbeing Way

Canalside Improvements and Wellbeing

The Southall Grand Union Canal Wellbeing Way is a green corridor that wraps around Southall, allowing local people to step away from the urban streets and connect with nature.

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Ealing’s Citizens’ Tribunal

Keeping Feet to the Flames

A independent Citizen’s Tribunal has been established to follow up on recommendations made by the Ealing Race Equality Commission and to hold the council and its partners to account on the delivery of its commitment and responsibilities to fight race inequality and promote race equality.

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