Acton is now posher than Chiswick

In 2017, David Lloyd Clubs took out a long lease on the privately owned sports facility at the end of my road. It used to be called the Park Club, but the new leaseholders, having spent £9 million tarting it up, proposed to call it ‘David Lloyd Chiswick Park’. As a proud resident of Acton, I was outraged and wrote to the CEO, pointing out that the new name would antagonise the locals by implying there was something shameful about their area. ‘The club is on a street called East Acton Lane, it’s about 250 yards from a railway station called Acton Central and 500 yards from a sign saying “Welcome to Acton”,’ I wrote. ‘If you pretend the club is located in Chiswick you will be ridiculed.’

He didn’t reply, but he must have got my letter because when the facility did reopen it was called ‘David Lloyd Acton Park’. That was a good decision, not least because five years later Acton is well on its way to becoming smarter than Chiswick. I’m biased, obviously, but things have changed since the makers of the current affairs series World in Action joked that if ITV cut its budget any further they’d have to rename it World in Acton. According to a piece in the Financial Times last year, the average price of a house in Acton has increased by 75 per cent in the past ten years, reaching £1.04 million in 2022. Chiswick house prices, by contrast, have risen only 55 per cent in the same period.

This boom is partly due to London’s Crossrail project, with Acton Main Line becoming a stop on the new Elizabeth line. If I time it right, I can get to Liverpool Street in half an hour.