Six days before local elections polling day, Southall Green councillor and Ealing Labour council leader Peter Mason has been named a semi-finalist for SME4Labour’s Labour Councillor of the Year 2026 award.
It seems only right to mark the occasion by celebrating Peter Mason’s achievements as a councillor.
The nomination form had a strict set of criteria to narrow down the list of possible winners from almost 6,000 Labour councillors nationwide. To make it to the last sixteen is an achievement in itself!
In support of Mason’s nomination, Southall Stories has compiled a selection of Peter’s “Greatest Hits”.
The Smell of Damp
Peter has spoken often about his childhood in a prefabricated concrete council house — the smell of damp, picking mould from window caulking, three months in temporary accommodation. These are not private memories. He put them on the public record, repeatedly, as the foundation of his claim to understand what bad housing does to people.
The auditors, the regulator, and the Housing Ombudsman have since offered their own assessment of how that understanding translated into leadership.
Ealing Council self-referred to the Regulator of Social Housing over housing health and safety failures in 2022. Three years on, the regulatory notice remains in place.
The Housing Ombudsman has issued findings of severe maladministration — specifically citing damp, mould, and repairs failures. Ealing’s accounts have received disclaimed audit opinions for four consecutive years — every year of Mason’s leadership. His external auditors identified unresolved housing governance failures for the third year running in their 2024/25 completion report. Nearly 3,000 households in Ealing are in temporary accommodation — among the highest in London.
Mason’s own leader’s allowance, meanwhile, has nearly doubled since 2021: from £32,100 to £62,815.
The Smell of Failure
On development, Southall generated over £13 million in Section 106 developer contributions over five years and received less than its share back.
Ealing Council’s own planning baseline, commissioned in 2022, counted nearly 12,000 new homes consented or under construction across Southall — and 4,171 jobs in its industrial areas, over a quarter of them in food and catering. The Southall Opportunity Area was designated on the promise of 9,000 new homes and 3,000 new jobs. The homes are arriving. The jobs are not.
On housing, Mason oversaw completion of just 16% of genuinely affordable homes paid for by a £100m grant from the GLA, while Ealing reportedly demolished 5,000 social homes — more than other London boroughs. A number of housing developments in Ealing and Southall remain unfinished after the building contractors went bust. Left to rot for years, they now face expensive demolition and rebuilding. The number of homeless families on the council waiting list rose to an unprecedented 12,000 before Mason cut it to 7,000 by removing eligibility for thousands with the lowest priority needs.
On waste, fly-tipping has more than tripled since the council’s 2016 decision to move to fortnightly collections. Ealing council’s viral TikTok “This is our home, not a tip” video was nominated for campaign of the year.
On environment, a recycling site that residents and regulators had warned about for years burned down in January 2026, costing the small business owner over half a million pounds. The council’s own investigation over more than a year had found nothing to be concerned about.
Mason’s council took a toddler to the high court to ensure that the closure of ten children’s centres across the borough can proceed to save money and “improve” children’s services.
In March 2026, a resident-led research group published What Happened to Southall? — a rigorous, extensively sourced report by Community Powered Reporting covering waste, housing, asset disposal, health, and democratic accountability under Mason’s council. It pulled together, in one place, a picture that many of us have been documenting piece by piece for years. The London Forum recently recommended it to its members stating:
London Forum members may be interested in it for the depth of analysis it shows and the implications.
The Smell of SMELabour
But perhaps I’m being unfair, and we should look at Peter Mason’s record on supporting small businesses in Southall and across Ealing? It is the Small Business Labour awards, after all.
In Southall, in his own words, Ealing Labour and Mason had pursued political policies that transformed Southall from a hub of industry and manufacturing into a dormitory town without the infrastructure to support it.
Tonight we hit the reset button for Southall, our industrious, resilient, entrepreneurial, diverse, incredible town.
It’s future is as a place of good, well-paid jobs, of culture and community pride - not a dormitory town.
As cabinet lead for housing, planning and transformation, and then as council leader, Mason oversaw the destruction of small businesses across Southall. In their place rose residential towers to house more than 10,000 new homes and tens of thousands of new residents in a town already struggling with chronic overcrowding.
A massive new data centre is set to be built around the corner from me on Brent Road Trident Way industrial site.
The proposed destruction of small businesses at The Green failed thanks in no small part to the incredible research and campaigning work of Ealing Community Independents candidate Minni Dogra, who is standing for election against Mason in Southall Green on Thursday.
Ealing Council’s own 2024 Southall Regeneration Framework acknowledges that despite over 1,800 new homes built since 2014, the jobs and employment space “has not come forward as planned.”
It confirms that Southall remains the borough’s lowest-paid town, with all its neighbourhoods ranking among the top 30% most deprived nationally. The framework sets targets for 3,000 new jobs by 2041. The council under Ealing Labour’s administration and Mason’s direction and control, has had since 2010 to make a start. But across Ealing during the past year, almost 2,000 jobs were lost.
The Smell of Success?
OK, what about across Ealing? There must be something positive we can say that will support Peter Mason’s nomination for Labour councillor of the year.
Others may know better than me, but all I can recall is Mason’s distaste for cars and community pharmacies on the high street.
The SME4Labour award celebrates dedication to local communities. By that measure, Southall Green residents — living with a regulatory housing notice, a more than trebled fly-tipping rate, a toxic gasworks legacy, and a council whose accounts have been disclaimed four years running — may have a different nomination in mind.
Vote for your own choice of Labour councillor of the year here.
The local election polls open at 7am on Thursday 7 May.