This is the story about how a council leader failed to deliver the new homes he promised to build, and how he wasted hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers money in doing so.

It’s also about how he ended up demolishing half-built homes and with them the hopes of homeless families on the housing waiting list.

Building Bingo

Five years ago I began documenting Ealing Labour council chief Peter Mason’s construction counting conjuring tricks and bungled building bingo under his watch as housing and planning cabinet lead, and later as leader.

Was it 898 genuinely affordable new homes in October 2019?

Was it 1355 genuinely affordable new homes available by May 2020?

Perhaps it was 723 in September 2020? Something is terribly wrong.

2185 or 735 in December 2020? Confusing.

1965 or 1228 in March 2021? I have no idea what’s going on.

Or 1277 in September 2021? Down 78 from 1355 in May 2020.

Maybe it was a miraculous 2442, an increase of 1165 new homes just five months later in January 2022?

Officially, it was a target-busting 2576 by end of March 2022.

Or was it the perfectly timed, election-friendly 2700 (April 2022)? Housing target demolished! “On Your Side!”

Just two days before the elections, the numbers decreased again to 2500 and then to 2000 from Mason’s own mouth (May 2022)? Reality check? Pre-election day honesty?

HOUSE!? Anyone?

Who knows?

Hitting The Target

Well, now we know.

Thanks to some erstwhile digging over at The View From W5, local investigative journalist Conal Urquhart has revealed that the number of genuinely affordable new homes built by Peter Mason’s Ealing Labour during the period 2018 to 2026 is…

🎯🎯🎯 ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY!!! 🎯🎯🎯

Conal has been doing some really tremendous work across Ealing. As his recent article “Ealing delivers 16 percent of its affordable homes target” explains.

While Mason’s numbers ballooned on social media, the reality was brutal: £100 million was allocated to build 1,138 homes - and by 2026 Ealing has delivered just 180.

Not quite a bullseye, Peter.

How can this be? How did Mason miss his target by so much?

How did Peter Mason build just 16% of the new homes that he promised over and over again to deliver?

New Homes That Are, In A Sense, NOT New Homes

Mason’s sleight of hand was what counts as a new home.

Any normal person might reasonably expect that you count a new home as being built when a family on the housing waiting list moves in.

You would be wrong.

A new home, in Peter Mason’s world, is when a digger breaks earth on site - it’s literally a hole in the ground.

When Mason claimed in May 2020 that there were “1,355 new homes available”, the council’s own performance dashboard shows this figure included homes that were merely onsite, started but not completed.

Unfinished building sites were presented to the public as available homes delivered.

As it turns out, many of Mason’s claimed 2,700 or 2,500, or 2,000 new homes were never completed.

Now you could say that this is not Mason’s doing, it’s just the way councils count new homes. And that’s true. However, Mason was elected on a campaign where he promised not only thousands of new homes, but “to create a more open and transparent way of doing things”.

Like many of these new homes, Peter Mason’s promises turned to dust.

Building foundations do not house families. Concrete frames do not reduce waiting lists.

Counting holes in the ground as “available homes delivered” is performative theatre, playground pretend politics not grown-up housing policy.

This accounting trick allows failure to be repackaged and sold to the electorate as success - while families remain stuck in overcrowded, inappropriate and expensive temporary accommodation.

The Southall Housing Disaster

Four years ago, Mason had ascended the greasy leadership pole (metaphorically stomping on his predecessor and mentor Julian Bell’s head on the way up) and found himself perched precariously at its summit.

Giddy with power, perhaps, and desperate to retain it just before the upcoming local elections, Peter proclaimed that he had built some beautiful and very much needed family homes in chronically overcrowded Southall Green, the ward he is elected to represent.

As is common with Peter Mason (and emperors with new wardrobes), all is often not as it seems.

Unfortunately for Peter, and for the families desperate for a proper home of their own, the builders Peter hired went bust before completion. For three years we’ve been left with this half-built eyesore rotting in the rain.

What makes this so much worse, is that Henry Construction’s owners had form. Only a few years previously they pulled the same stunt with insolvency and unfinished buildings.

The question has to be asked: what due diligence was undertaken by Ealing Council prior to awarding these contracts?

Like Norwood Road, we now find that the much larger development site Southall Market Car Park, may have to be demolished, too, and built all over again at great extra cost.

From Funding to Failure

2018 - £100 million funding awarded to Ealing for 1,138 homes

2018 - Mason and Bell set 2500 new homes target

2019–2022 - Mason and Ealing publicly claim between 700 and 2,700 “homes delivered”

2023–2026 - Norwood Road and Southall Market contractor collapses, site abandoned

2026 - Council admits just 180 homes completed across Ealing

The Due Diligence Question

What makes this debacle more serious than simple bad luck is who was awarded the contract.

Henry Construction did not fail without warning.

As documented by Conal Urquhart in “Demolition of Ealing homes part of trail of chaos” and “History of insolvency and £10 million dividend”:

• The controlling figures had prior insolvency collapses
• A £10 million dividend was extracted shortly before one such collapse
• Similar projects had previously failed
• This information was publicly available.

Given Henry Construction’s documented insolvency history, it raises serious questions about Ealing Council’s contractor vetting process - and who signed off on the risk.

Public procurement best practice normally includes:

• Financial stability checks
• Director background reviews
• Track record assessment
• Risk protection through bonds or guarantees

If those safeguards failed, or were bypassed, voters and taxpayers deserve answers.

Norwood Road is not an isolated incident.

Across Ealing we see:

• £100 million funding → 180 homes delivered
• Multiple failed construction schemes
• Inflated delivery figures
• Politically convenient announcement timing

This looks less like misfortune and more like a culture of optics over outcomes.

The Human Cost

Behind the charts and press releases sit real families:

• Stuck in overcrowded, inaccessible temporary accommodation
• Waiting years longer than promised
• Watching public money vanish into failed builds
• Living beside abandoned construction sites

A mother of a nineteen year old boy and a six year old girl with difficulty walking and a developmental delay was placed by Ealing Council in an inaccessible one bedroom Southall flat on the first floor.

The McCreesh family were made homeless and face financial ruin after Ealing failed to deliver their promised accessible new home in time. “Mr Mccreesh said he received emails from an Ealing Council housing officer stating they were “not responsible” for new-build properties and could not provide a completion date.”

Southall Green was promised regeneration. Instead, we got Peter Mason.

What Happens Next?

Norwood Road will likely be demolished. Millions more will be spent rebuilding what should never have failed. Waiting-list families will continue waiting. The housing crisis in Ealing will deepen.

Why should Southall Green voters trust Mason to deliver housing when his track record demonstrates the opposite?

The Norwood Road site isn’t unique - it’s symptomatic. Across Ealing, the same patterns repeat: grand announcements, botched delivery, zero accountability, and working-class communities left picking up the pieces.

This is governance by press release, and it’s time someone demanded better.