Ealing Council election results Thursday 7 May 2026
Southall Stories - Investigative Journalism

Southall Stories

Digging the dirt, unearthing the truth

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    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.

    Auto-generated description: A complaint alleges that Sams Recycling is burning toxic melamine-coated wood particles, which may violate environmental regulations and pose health risks.

    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). …

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    Local Democracy

    Environment

    Community

    Commentary

    Health

    Pollution

    How to Report Nuisance and Pollution in Ealing


    Reporting a Nuisance in Ealing

    A short epic of civic persistence (and becoming the problem)

    Please complete this form.

    Ealing Council's website interface offers options to report noise nuisances, including noise, odor, or a combination of issues, with links for further information and guidance. [SATIRE]

    Invocation

    Sing, website, sing.
    Of forms and thresholds, boxes small,
    of windows that open into darkness,
    of daytime hotlines that take you to voicemail
    by those who never lived the night.

    Sing of a citizen with sleep in debt,
    who brings a sound, a smell, a (non-epileptic) tremor
    to the gates of order —
    and finds, beyond the gate,
    only more order.

    I. The Omen

    It starts with …

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    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?”

    A trailer filled with plastic bags is parked in Sam's Recycling yard in Southall with a worker nearby and smoke rising from the incinerator chimney.

    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 …

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    Local Democracy

    Commentary

    Ealing Labour

    Features

    Housing

    Demolition Man: Peter Mason's Legacy of Half-Built Homes and Hollow Promises

    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.

    Councillor Peter Mason and then Council Leader Julian Bell stand behind large numbers 2500 designed to look like brick walls, in front of Ealing Town Hall.

    Building Bingo

    Five years ago I began documenting Ealing Labour council chief Peter Mason’s construction counting conjuring tricks and bungled building bingo under …

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    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 …

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    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, …

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    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 …

    Campaigns

    Commentary

    Podcast

    Children's Centres

    AI

    Save Ealing Children’s Centres Campaign Update

    Save Ealing Children’s Centres campaign raised over £5,000 in just eight days to begin legal action against Ealing Council to prevent closure of ten and of the borough’s twenty-five children’s centres.

    An audio summary of my satirical take on what it’s all about.

    In English:

    In Punjabi:

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    Local Democracy

    Commentary

    Children's Centres

    Personal

    Corruption

    The Pied Piper of Ealing

    A couple of weeks ago, big kid sang at the Royal Albert Hall in “Ealing Together: Harmony in Diversity,” performing lyrics by Jewish socialist and renowned children’s author Michael Rosen in a new song “Ada in Ealing”, a celebration of a former Ealing resident, and the world’s first computer programmer and a pioneer of mathematical logic, Ada Lovelace.

    Auto-generated description: A grand orchestral performance is taking place in a large, ornate concert hall filled with an audience and illuminated by colorful lights.

    Tonight he performed in his school’s musical version of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a story about …

    Local Democracy

    Commentary

    Podcast

    Children's Centres

    Corruption

    AI

    So it Goes: AI on the Absurd Logic of Ealing Council

    🎧 I fed my satirical piece about Ealing’s democratic innovations into Google’s NotebookLM.

    Two AI hosts discovered how perfectly logical it is to close children’s centres while voting yourself a 70% pay rise. They marveled at the mathematical elegance of spending £1 million on councillor allowances to save £750,000 on community services. They found it remarkable that one person could tweet about “putting people before buildings” and then close the very buildings …

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    Campaigns

    Local Democracy

    Commentary

    Children's Centres

    Ealing Labour

    Features

    Corruption

    Exposes

    Perceval House W5: Where Local Democracy in Ealing Goes to Die

    The Children’s Centres Crusade

    Auto-generated description: A person is smiling while holding a sign that says NO TO ALL CHILDREN'S CENTRES amidst a crowd.

    Chapter 1: The Art of Political Contradiction

    In the London Borough of Ealing, our elected representatives have perfected something remarkable: the ability to hold completely contradictory public positions without experiencing any apparent cognitive dissonance.

    Take our Council Leader. On January 15, 2015, he tweeted: “Think its really important that we put people before buildings. Important we keep activities going & that can be done in a …

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    Local Democracy

    Environment

    Community

    Commentary

    Gasworks

    Features

    Personal

    Pollution

    Southall Odours

    I step out of my house and immediately notice the artificial “cotton fresh” scent of odour suppressants wafting south from the old Gasworks site. How can this be? They finished remediating the contaminated earth in 2019, and people have been living there in the new homes they built since 2021.

    Still, it’s better than the smell of petrol, which is what we had to put up with day and night for months on end in 2018. Bad enough to wake us up in the night during the long hot summer. …

    Environment

    Commentary

    Gasworks

    Research

    Health

    Personal

    Pollution

    COPD

    Last week I received confirmation of a diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) based on results of spirometry tests back in August (it took that long for my GP surgery to get the results from the test centre, and only after my own intervention after their repeated failures).

    My GP helpfully seemed very keen to blame my twenty-odd year history of smoking.

    I first smoked at about age 20. My parents were smokers (wasn’t everyone back then?). I was never a heavy smoker. The …

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    Local Democracy

    Community

    Commentary

    Ealing Labour

    Features

    The Cuckoo's Nest

    Ealing Genocide Supporters Club (aka Ealing Labour Party) held their Southall Branch meeting yesterday at the Dominion Centre in Southall. Under the guise of a “Your Town, Your Voice” community get together, our local elected repellents gathered on masse in all their finery. I couldn’t help myself as they posed for a group photo all gurning inanely as the photographer encouraged them to “say cheese!”. “Say genocide!” I offered. “Genocide …

    Environment

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    Features

    Housing

    Health

    Developers, if you Really Want to Help

    This was survey feedback given to developers proposing to build a massive data centre on the site of the industrial estate down the road from me, but it applies more broadly to all big developers, especially those with annual profits of half a billion pounds.

    I’m concerned about noise from the site causing a nuisance and health problems in an area that is already susceptible to multiple environmental health stressors, and exacerbated by deep-rooted poverty, deprivation, low pay and …

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    Local Democracy

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    Ealing Labour

    Features

    Personal

    Corruption

    ToryBoy

    ToryBoy The Movie is the account of filmmaker John Walsh’s disillusionment with what he saw as the corruption, lies, hypocrisy and general incompetence of Blair’s Labour government, and his conversion to the Conservative (Tory) Party general election candidate for Middlesbrough in 2010.

    Under his own steam and £15,000 of his own money, John found his opponent, Sir Stuart Bell, the serial incumbent Labour MP, invisible and unknown to his local constituents who nevertheless voted him …

    Environment

    Commentary

    Gasworks

    Ealing Labour

    Health

    Ethics

    AI

    Risks to Health from Remediating Southall Gasworks

    AI is more ethical than Ealing Labour Party. No money was exchanged.

    What are the risks to health from remediating Southall Gasworks on site in the open air? The land is highly contaminated with benzene, naphthalene and a while host of other VOCs, PAHs, heavy metals, “blue billy” and asbestos, and surrounded by residential streets. The local community is mostly of south Asian and African heritage, and it is known that people with this heritage can be genetically vulnerable to …

    Local Democracy

    Environment

    Community

    Commentary

    Gasworks

    Ealing Labour

    Health

    Ethics

    AI

    I am the Leader of Ealing Council

    I asked Google Bard to advise me on a local matter.

    I am the leader of Ealing Council. I have received more than 250 reports about a BAD odour nuisance and air pollution from the remediation of the highly contaminated Southall Gasworks land. We had a public meeting where 250 angry residents complained about health problems as a result of the air pollution, including eye, nose and throat irritation, respiratory problems and infections, and even cancer and death of loved ones. The developer has …

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    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 …

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    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 …

    Campaigns

    Local Democracy

    Environment

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    Gasworks

    Ealing Labour

    Berkeley Group

    Health

    Corruption

    Pollution

    Weasel Words on Air Quality Monitoring

    Weasel words from Ealing Labour Council, who for six years have shown utter contempt for the health and wellbeing of Southall’s schoolchildren forced to live in the toxic stink created by Berkeley Group’s unsafe development of the old Gasworks site. 1/11

    aroundealing.com/news/240000-in…

    Take Blair Peach Primary School, adjacent to the highly contaminated old Gasworks site in Southall.

    In 2016, Ealing Labour Council removed a functioning air quality monitor from the school grounds. …

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    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 …

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    Local Democracy

    Commentary

    Ealing Labour

    Features

    Corruption

    Exposes

    Ealing Labour Leaks

    Is anyone interested in seeing a selection of leaked WhatsApp group messages from some Ealing Labour councillors?

    An inside look at what they really think about Bell, Mason, Sharma?

    The institutional bullying and corruption they kept quiet for years?

    #EalingLabourLeaks

    A couple things before I get started.

    My source has obviously said that it's ok to publish these.

    I've edited the screenshots to remove some names. I don't want to embarrass people unnecessarily, or make them feel …

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    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 …

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    Local Democracy

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    Ealing Labour

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    From the Southall Big Plan AGM in 2017

    Some perennial problems that our elected representatives seem to be unable - or unwilling - to do anything about.

    Some things never change!

    Priority from nine years ago - clean streets!

    Julian Bell's Ten Year Plan.

    40% 'affordable homes' then. 30% 'genuinely affordable homes 'now.

    Toilets?!

    'We care about Southall', they say.

    That must be why they handed it over to the developers, and turned into a concrete jungle.

    Encouraging people to take more exercise by …