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Two water companies, and only one of them publishes a number for your street

The Drinking Water Inspectorate lists Ealing under Thames Water Utilities Ltd and, separately, under Affinity Water. Very few London boroughs appear on both lists. In practice the split runs roughly west to east: Affinity's published supply zones inside the borough are named Southall and Greenford/Northolt, while Ealing town, Acton and the eastern side sit with Thames Water. There is no Affinity zone named Ealing or Acton anywhere in its ninety-four published zone reports.

The Affinity figures are worth knowing because they are specific and current. For the period 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2025, the Southall zone (AF063) reports total hardness of 280 mg/l calcium carbonate and calcium of 112 mg/l. The Greenford/Northolt zone (AF061) reports 305 mg/l calcium carbonate and 122 mg/l calcium. Read against Thames Water's own published scale, which classes 200 to 300 mg/l as hard and above 300 as very hard, Southall sits near the top of the hard band and Greenford and Northolt cross into very hard.

Thames Water publishes no equivalent zone report we could retrieve for the eastern half of the borough. What it does state is that 'all the water in our region is hard', because it sources '65% of our water from local rivers and 35% from natural reservoirs underground'. Its bands are soft up to 100, slightly hard 100 to 150, moderately hard 150 to 200, hard 200 to 300 and very hard above 300 mg/l calcium carbonate. If you are in W3, W5 or W13, check your own supply zone on the company's site rather than assuming a Southall or Greenford number applies to you.

This is not an abstract point. At 280 to 305 mg/l, calcium carbonate deposits continuously on immersion elements, cylinder coils, plate heat exchangers and thermostatic shower cartridges. A scaled component fails, gets replaced and fails again on roughly the same timeline unless the water is treated. On a repeat hot water fault in Southall, Greenford or Northolt, scale is the first thing we check rather than the last, and we would rather talk to you about treatment than sell you the same part twice.

Large households, and systems that were sized for smaller ones

Ealing has 133,659 households and 367,115 usual residents, the third largest resident population of any London borough. What distinguishes it is the size of those households. 7.3% contain five people, eighth highest in London against a London figure of 5.9%. 3.0% contain six, ninth highest. 1.3% contain seven and 1.2% contain eight or more, both around eleventh in London and roughly double the England figures.

Overcrowding follows. 10.3% of Ealing households sit at an occupancy rating of -1 on the bedroom standard and 2.8% at -2 or less, ninth highest in London on the tighter measure against 2.2% for London and 0.7% for England. At the other end, 20.3% of homes have four or more bedrooms, ninth highest in London, so the borough contains both large houses and heavy occupancy, sometimes in the same building.

The plumbing consequence is straightforward and it is the single most useful thing to understand about repairs here. A house plumbed for four people using one bathroom in sequence, with a cylinder or a combi chosen on that assumption, does not fail because a component was defective. It fails because the duty cycle is roughly double what the part was rated for. Diverter valves, pumps, immersion elements, shower cartridges and thermostatic mixing valves all go early, and they go again after replacement if nobody addresses the sizing.

So we do two things on a high-occupancy Ealing job. We repair what failed, on the visit, from van stock wherever the part is a common one. Then we put in writing whether the system can actually serve the number of people living there. For a landlord under one of Ealing's licensing schemes that written assessment is not optional politeness, because a hot water system that cannot serve the permitted occupancy is a licensing problem as well as a comfort one.

Borough-wide HMO licensing, fifteen selectively licensed wards, and a scheme that expires in March 2027

Ealing runs one of the more demanding licensing regimes in west London, and one part of it is due to expire, which makes the timing worth watching.

Additional HMO licensing applies to the whole borough. The designation states that it 'shall apply to the whole area of the London Borough of Ealing as delineated and edged red on the map at Annex A', that it 'came into force on 01 April 2022' and that it 'shall cease to have effect on 31 March 2027'. Unusually, and unlike Croydon or Wandsworth, Ealing does license Section 257 converted buildings: the designation covers 'Converted building HMOs, as defined by section 257 of the Housing Act 2004 ... but only where all accommodation units are privately rented', and excludes those 'that consist of no more than two flats'. Ealing also issues a standalone Section 257 licence for freeholders of buildings converted into three or more rented flats.

Selective licensing sits on top of that in named wards, in two tranches, both described by the council on pre-May-2022 ward boundaries. From 1 April 2022: East Acton, Southall Broadway and Southall Green. From 3 January 2023: Acton Central, Dormers Wells, Greenford Broadway, Greenford Green, Hanger Hill, Hobbayne, Lady Margaret, North Greenford, Northolt Mandeville, Northolt West End, Perivale and South Acton. Fifteen wards in total, on boundaries that have since been redrawn, so check your own address against the council's map rather than a ward name you remember.

Ealing's published fee schedule puts a selective licence at £750 in two parts, an additional HMO licence at £1,300, a Section 257 licence at £1,100 and a mandatory HMO licence at £1,500 rising to £2,000 for twenty or more bedrooms, with a £75 accredited landlord discount, a £50 discount for an EPC rating of A to C and £100 added for paper applications. Those are the fees the council publishes with a 2024 footer.

The successor scheme is being consulted on now. Ealing's own magazine states that 'The current borough-wide scheme began in April 2022 and is due to end on 31 March 2027' and that a consultation 'opened on 15 July and runs until 24 September 2026'. It also reports that council inspectors 'identified 4,890 housing hazards during inspections of more than 900 HMOs over the past 2 years', against an estimated 8,360 HMOs in the borough. Whatever replaces the current scheme, the direction of travel is clear.

Article 4 across nearly the whole borough, and what it stops

Planning control on HMO conversion has tightened here faster than most people realise. Ealing made two Article 4 directions on 30 October 2024, withdrawing 'the permitted development right to change use from a dwelling house (Class C3) to a small HMO (Class C4) use'. The immediate direction took effect on 30 October 2024 covering Perivale ward. The non-immediate direction 'came into force on 14 November 2025' and covers 'the whole area of borough of Ealing apart from the excluded areas', those being Perivale ward and the part of the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation area inside Ealing.

In effect, since 14 November 2025 converting a family house into a small shared house needs planning permission essentially everywhere in the borough. The council's own framing is that 'Conversions will still be allowed with planning permission, but the council will be better able to manage their impact on the local area'.

That matters to us because it changes what a landlord can lawfully ask for. Splitting a bathroom, adding an en suite, running a second soil connection or reconfiguring a kitchen to support an extra household is not just a plumbing job in Ealing. It may be a material change of use requiring consent. We will do the work, and we will say so before we start rather than after an enforcement letter arrives.

The heritage side adds a second layer. Ealing states that it has 'almost 600 listed buildings, 30 conservation areas, municipal parks, woodlands, canals, and ancient monuments'. A conservation area review considered by the planning committee on 19 November 2025 added an area and altered fourteen boundaries, so the count is approximate rather than fixed. In those areas the emergency repair still goes ahead. It is the permanent reinstatement, and particularly anything visible on a front elevation, that needs the consent question asked first.

New blocks on the Elizabeth line, and a Southall estate with no boilers in it

Ealing publishes that as at 31 May 2025 it had '9,187 council homes', '4,861 leasehold and shared ownership homes', '19 hostel buildings' and 29 high-rise buildings over 18 metres. Alongside that stock sits a large volume of recent development, much of it driven by the Elizabeth line. The Southall Opportunity Area Planning Framework, adopted 15 July 2014, set out 'at least 6,000 new homes and 3,000 new jobs across 10 development sites in a 520 ha opportunity area over 20 years' and stated that it sets out 'how new development, accelerated by Crossrail, can be managed'. Treat that as a target set in 2014 rather than a delivered figure.

One of those developments changes the plumbing entirely. At The Green Quarter in Southall, the billing agent states that 'Berkeley Homes (Southall) Limited supplies the thermal energy that heats your home and provides hot water' from 'A centralised heat source, located in the plant room of the building, which delivers heat and hot water to residents' homes through a series of insulated pipes'. Homes on that arrangement have a heat interface unit, not a boiler. There is no appliance in the flat for a Gas Safe engineer to repair.

Census 2021 puts 2.3% of Ealing households on a district or communal heat network only, below the London figure of 3.4%, so this is still a minority of the borough. But it is a growing minority and it produces a distinct type of emergency: no heat and no hot water across a whole block at once, with nothing inside the flat that can be fixed. What we can usefully do at midnight is confirm the fault sits upstream of your heat interface unit, get you hot water another way where possible, and give you a written report to put in front of the managing agent.

The rest of the borough is conventional. 73.1% of Ealing households heat on mains gas only and 11.6% on electricity only. Those are boiler jobs and immersion or unvented cylinder jobs respectively, and we hold the Gas Safe registration and the G3 qualification to cover both.