Total: 23 posts
Posts in: Investigations
Investigations into local community, democracy and policy issues.
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Original Atkins report data doesn’t add up, and is full of holes.
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PHE’s method of presenting data is unscientific and misleading, and appears designed to minimise the levels of toxic emissions.
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Average levels of benzene and naphthalene at the southern boundary near the soil hospital have been up to 2 times higher than the legal limit for at least seven months.
Investigations
Local Democracy
Environment
Commentary
Health
Personal
Computer Says No
How many times have you asked yourself — or heard others ask the same question?
Why does the council never reply to my emails?!
When residents raised concerns about toxic odours from the Southall Gasworks site, they were told to keep reporting. Every call, every email, every logged complaint was encouraged.
“It’s good you’re making so many complaints,” they were told at a meeting with Peter Mason in March 2019.
Volume of reporting, the implication was, would produce …
Investigations
Community
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Health
Ethics
The Drugs Don't Work
This is the story about how Ealing’s incredibly valuable and (very likely) hugely under-resourced drug and alcohol treatment service has been moved about, along with its vulnerable service users, for what appears to be — at least partly — political gain by Ealing Labour.
The scale of the borough’s substance misuse crisis is real.
According to the council’s own 2025 Substance Misuse Service report, Ealing has an estimated 2,103 opiate and crack users and 3,658 alcohol dependent drinkers. …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Exposes
BREAKING NEWS
The Smell of Success
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 …
Investigations
Environment
Commentary
Ealing Labour
BREAKING NEWS
Updates
This Is Our Home. It's a Tip.
Update, 1 May 2026: A reader has correctly pointed out that the Defra 2024-25 fly-tipping statistics cover April 2024 to March 2025 — and therefore predate Ealing Council’s “This Is Our Home, Not a Tip” campaign and Peter Mason’s claimed 55% reduction in fly-tipping across Southall, both of which relate to 2025-26. The Defra figures establish the pre-campaign baseline, not the campaign’s results.
However, the contradiction at the heart of this piece does not depend …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Environment
Commentary
Research
On the Bins Again
This is a follow-up to Bangarang! Pirate Pete and the Lost Bin Collections of Southall and Boomerang! Ten Years Sorting Out Fly-Tipping, which documented how fly-tipping in Ealing doubled the year weekly black bag collections were scrapped in 2016 — and remained at that high level ever since.
After those two articles, a commenter on a separate Facebook post promoting the launch of the “What Happened to Southall?” report questioned the focus on bin collections, among other things.
MW …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Community
Features
Research
Exposes
What Happened to Southall?
A substantial new report on Ealing Council’s record in Southall landed this week, and it deserves your attention.
What Happened to Southall? is published by Community Powered Reporting, a volunteer resident-led research group, and it covers waste, housing, asset disposal, health, democratic accountability and pension fund investments — with extensive sourcing from council documents, FOI responses, and public data.
I haven’t read every page yet, but what I have read is rigorous, …
Investigations
Environment
Community
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Research
Boomerang! Ten Years Sorting Out Fly-tipping
Two weeks ago, I reported on the results of my research into the fly-tipping epidemic that has hit Ealing, and Southall in particular.
In short, fly-tipping across the borough literally doubled from July 2016, immediately after Ealing Council reduced household waste collections from weekly to fortnightly.
It’s remained at that high level ever since, and residents report that it’s getting even worse in recent years.
The nature of these sudden and sustained increases strongly indicate …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Exposes
The Broken Manifesto Promises that show how Labour is Failing Ealing
You’ve got to hand it to Peter Mason.
Every four years he manages to regenerate, reinvent and transform himself and Ealing Labour into a new and improved version of reality.
He has a creative imagination. His ambition is unbridled. He is resilient and resourceful. Nothing, it seems, can stop him recycling ever more of the same old rubbish manifesto promises while simultaneously presenting them to the public as successful achievements we should want more of.
Of course, it would be unfair to …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Research
Housing
Section 106 money: where did Southall’s “developer tax” go?
With council elections less than three months away, Ealing Council is busy using “Ealing Council’s magazine for residents” to promote news of Ealing Labour’s local “achievements” in an effort to persuade voters that, despite national Labour’s dismal regurgitation of failed and cruel Tory government austerity policies and shameless political scandals going right to the heart of the UK establishment, Peter Mason’s Ealing Labour are still “on your …
Investigations
Environment
Community
Exposes
The EA Files: What Regulators Knew About Fire Risks at Southall Recycling Site
A Site That “No One Checked”?
When a commenter asked why “no one from the council checked” Sam’s Recycling before the Johnson Street fire, the short answer is uncomfortable:
The council did check. Repeatedly. For over a year.
And officially, they found nothing.
Yet the risks were documented.
What follows is drawn from Environment Agency inspection reports, enforcement correspondence and Environmental Information Request disclosures obtained in early 2024 by a local resident (anonymised here). …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Environment
Community
Commentary
Pollution
Exposes
The Council Investigation That Found Nothing
They Did Check It Out. That’s What Makes It Worse.
A response to “Why didn’t the council investigate?"
Following publication of my article on the Johnson Street fire, a reader asked: “Why did no one from the council check it out?”
The answer is more disturbing than regulatory neglect.
They did check it out.
They conducted almost a year-long investigation.
They made site visits. They reviewed evidence.
And then they claimed to find nothing.
This isn’t a …
Investigations
Environment
Community
Health
Pollution
Exposes
A Fire We Were Warned About
Literally within a couple of hours of posting my update on the Southall Gasworks / Toxic Town scandal yesterday, the recycling site just behind our home burned to the ground. My wife was terrified the fire would spread to our home with our two young children and now my elderly mum, too. Fortunately for everyone living nearby the emergency response was rapid and effective, and while the fire caused a great deal of inconvenience for weary travellers due to the closure of the adjacent Great Western …
Investigations
Community
Research
Health
AI
Toxic Town - Have You Been Affected?
Last week I watched last year’s Toxic Town series on Netflix, and then the Horizon documentary from 2020 (available on DailyMotion).
For anyone unfamiliar with it, Toxic Town tells the story of families in Corby, Northamptonshire, who were exposed to toxic dust during the reclamation of the Corby steelworks in the 1980s and 1990s. Nineteen families had children born with limb differences or other serious health problems - at least one resulting in the death of a newborn baby.
Over time, …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Berkeley Group
Features
Corruption
Exposes
Ealing For Sale
Peter Mason’s foreword to Ealing Council’s 2023-2027 Land and Property Strategy [pdf] promises to “retain assets for maximum resident benefit.” It’s a reassuring commitment from the council leader who styles himself as protector of public services.
But scroll through Mason’s 26 page document, and you’ll find the reality: 760+ community assets across Ealing marked for “strategic review” - the euphemism that precedes disposal. The strategy …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Environment
Commentary
Features
Health
Pollution
Response to Ealing's Air Quality Strategy and Action Plan
Ealing Council’s draft Air Quality Strategy is a 64 page document together with a 40 page Action Plan, and the consultation period runs until 30 January 2023. It’s taken me the best part of six weeks, all my spare time over Christmas and New Year, to get through it all, make notes and cross-reference to try to make sense of it all and offer some feedback.
Really, there must be a much longer consultation period if Ealing Council is genuinely interested in residents' views.
The …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Features
Housing
Corruption
The Property Lobby: the Hidden Reality behind the Housing Crisis in Ealing
There will be 14,800 new homes in 23 new developments in Southall over the next few years. 14 units over 10 stories high, and 7 over 20 stories high. Up to 40,000 new residents (and their cars)!
One third of the total new developments in the whole of Ealing borough (only Acton is getting it worse).
So not happening so much in the ‘white’ or richer areas of the borough, for some reason.
None of these homes will be genuinely affordable to most people currently living in overcrowded …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Berkeley Group
Features
Corruption
Ealing Monopoly
Who wants to know more about how, twelve years ago, an exclusive group of rich, mostly white, middle aged men in suits planned to take advantage of the financial crash and austerity politics to sell Ealing's public land and buildings for profit like they were playing monopoly? 
A few familiar and influential names including, of course, the late Tony Pidgley of Berkeley Group and Southall Gasworks infamy.
A five year plan to sell off our public assets for £20m profit.
Not a single one …
Investigations
Campaigns
Local Democracy
Environment
Gasworks
Ealing Labour
Berkeley Group
Health
Pollution
Questions for Cabinet Leads
Questions for Cllrs @_petermason, @DrAyshaRaza, @jkblacker, @JasbirAnand2 and @kamnagpal on tackling inequalities, healthy lives, thriving communities, a fairer start, specifically in reference to the ongoing air pollution and odour nuisance from the old Southall Gasworks site.
1) Why was there no Equalities Impact Assessment, taking into account the local area's existing economic and health inequalities?
2) Why weren't local residents informed about the risks (including …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Housing
Look at these Bricks!
Imported from the original Twitter thread (via Thread Reader App), where you will find a better and complete viewing experience.
Look at these bricks!
Is 2500:
A) The year the new cinema in Ealing will finally be opened to the public?
B) The price of a return flight to Nice airport and five nights in Cannes?
C) The number of genuinely affordable homes to be built by Ealing Council in the four years 2018-22?
GAH! 
898: October 2019: (ealing.gov.uk/news/article/1…)
1355: May 2020: ( …
Investigations
Environment
Gasworks
Berkeley Group
Health
Corruption
PHE cover-up, continued
This is a follow-up post to my previous PHE cover-up note.
Here is a graphical representation of what my earlier post found - …
Investigations
Campaigns
Environment
Gasworks
Berkeley Group
Research
Health
Ethics
Pollution
Naphthalene Poisoning Risk in People of African and Asian Heritage
Scientific and medical research shows that people of Asian and African ethnicity are genetically more susceptible to naphthalene poisoning via inhalation.
@PHE_London representative Robie Kamanyire falsely claimed this is from ingestion only.
youtube.com/embed/ZdTj-l3S…
@PHE_London 50% ingested, 50% inhaled vapours.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.11…
@PHE_London Roby Kamanyire has emailed the following response to my query. 
@PHE_London It beggars belief, his response. …
Investigations
Campaigns
Environment
Community
Gasworks
Berkeley Group
Health
Corruption
Pollution
Exposes
Berkeley's School Governors Board Member
This has shocked us all to the core.
@BerkeleyGroupUK's Head of Construction at #SouthallWaterside asked to join the board of governors at the adjacent Blair Peach Primary School.
This is from the minutes of that meeting (29/11/17). 1/7
"The HT reported that a smell/odour from the building works has on certain occasions been extremely strong, resulting in headaches ad asthma attacks. In addition, a white cloud / mist was apparent for two days." 2/7
"The HT confirmed that she …
Investigations
Campaigns
Environment
Gasworks
Berkeley Group
Health
Corruption
Pollution
Exposes
Visit to Southall Waterside (aka The Green Quarter)
Visit To #SouthallWaterside
1:40 @damian_leydon 'We had to shut the site for 2 days when it snowed, it was unsafe... it cost me a lot of money to shut the site, but it was the right decision... We all know that ice can be dangerous!'
#SouthallLivesMatter
2:07 Visitor: 'Can we go into the soil hospital?'
@damian_leydon 'Er... no. No we won't be able to go in there today.'
#SouthallWaterside #MakingSouthallStink #Southall
Old story, but: 'Berkeley Homes is threatening hundreds of …