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Rosco White · 6/5/2026 11:04:00 AM

new.EalingToday.co.uk Communtity Forum Topic posting

Ealing to close its housing companies with £15 million in negative equity  

Those Financial Geniuses at Perceval House at it again, no doubt The Idiot Vote is pleased with putting them back in. I recall this was started by BellEnd when he was in charge?Liebore eh?Ealing to close its housing companies with £15 million in negative equity  The council waited until after the election to propose the closure of Broadway Living companies after it spent £42.3 million but gained only £26.7 million in assetsRead more and subscribe to the View from W5 https://theviewfromw5.substack.com/p/ealing-to-close-its-housing-companies

Rosco White ● 25d38 Comments

There are always plenty of decisions to be made. Some are going to be more difficult to reverse than others. The situation re water has become increasingly obvious and worse.

Philippa Bond ● 1d

I understand the concept of affordable, though I’m not sure the council does.Strange that a supposedly socialist local authority isn’t interested in social housing, which is a different thing to affordable. They demolished rather a lot of the existing ones in the borough in regeneration projects and didn’t replace them.You might be mistaken about developers building things they can’t sell. Still empty housing units around London, brand new but too pricey for what they are.You seem to misunderstand the difference between building housing and creating communities. The obvious answer to the lack of housing is to stick up huge, cheaply built towers with no supporting infrastructure. Effectively what happened in the 1960s here and elsewhere, an experiment that failed. Fast tracking such developments is risky. Somebody has to provide infrastructure otherwise you just create ghettos.Of course there’s no easy solution.

Simon Hayes ● 5d

Private market housing in desirable locations is always going to sell particularly waterside locations so it shouldn't be a surprise that this continues to be built. There seems to be some confusion about what affordable actually means in this context. In the generally understood sense, all housing is built to be affordable as no developer would construct something they couldn't sell. 'Affordable' housing when we are talking about councils is effectively subsidised with the cost of provision being put on the developer, effectively a tax on house building. My view is that it is very dangerous for the state to start concerning itself with profit margins of businesses. Your belief that both affordable housing and infrastructure should be paid for by developers is shared across government both local and national. This system work reasonably well when interest rates were low and construction was more affordable. A combination of Covid, Ukraine, Brexit and now Iran has meant that developers have to carry the burden of both increased costs and the quasi taxes that you want to levy on them. The result is that housing starts have collapsed. This is compounded by Housing Associations not having the means to take on affordable units due to their own costs rising as a result of increased regulation. As I said, it is a complex situation with no apparent straightforward solution. I believe complaints about infrastructure are often overstated and most affordable housing other than that for social rent is not particularly attractive for people looking for homes so I would waive any such requirements for new developments that meet the needs of the local area e.g. for Ealing, family housing. You could also fast track the planning process for schemes that clearly are a response to local need and not speculative.

Gordon Southwell ● 5d

There’s plenty of housing being built in some areas. Pop down to Brentford and see the swanky riverside flats going up there apace. It’s the same in other parts of the country. I was in Poole recently and no shortage of new builds there either. But then these are expensive properties aimed at the investment market or those with money looking to relocate.Perhaps the developers need to reassess their profit margins, 20-30 percent on any project is always going to make affordable housing a low priority for them.Perhaps London has reached its natural population capacity. Infrastructure is creaking and we don’t have enough investment in things like hospitals and transport to support the massive influx of new residents.If you look at places like Brentford where huge new developments are planned at the old GSK site, at the old Homebase site and the existing Tesco site you have to ask how are these tens of thousands of people going to access things like healthcare? West Middlesex hospital won’t cope.It’s madness to promise house building without investment in infrastructure. The s106 monies never found its way to where it was needed, and the new CIL(well, new to Ealing anyway, after 15 years) has already seen developers like Berkeley Homes exempted because they said it would make regeneration in Southall unviable. Who are they kidding?As you point out, there’s a collapse in private sector market for flats, yet still they want to build more.What’s your solution to this housing crisis Gordon? The price of a property is usually dictated by location. London is expensive, without even considering the costs of council tax, transport and everything else.

Simon Hayes ● 5d

One of the arguments in favour of Broadway Living was that it would have given the council more control over the affordable housing component and allowed a higher proportion of social rent. For third party developments I can't see that the lack of enforcement of affordable housing requirements is the problem at the moment. That surely is that hardly any housing of any kind are being built at the moment which is partly down to councils, including Ealing insisting on levels that make developments uneconomic. The system has yet to adjust to the fact that rising interest rates and construction costs has meant that it is simply impossible to build homes profitably if a third or more are 'affordable' and then built at a loss. This would be the case even if the primary market for private sector flats had not collapsed. There are no easy answers here but in my view the wrong way to go is to continue insist on high affordability targets. The quest to make some housing affordable has made all housing unaffordable and in Ealing has forced a move to skyscraper living in an area blessed by the Victorians and Edwardians with beautiful low rise homes. We should stop pretending we are not in a crisis situation and recognise the first priority is to remove the distortions that are leading to building of unsaleable flats. An affordable housing target is a tax on new homes so the best way to start dealing with the homeless issue is to remove this tax.

Gordon Southwell ● 5d

They could have enforced the affordable housing element of all developments instead of rolling over and reducing the amounts to negligible levels. That might have been a start. As has been said elsewhere it’s affordability rather than lack of housing that’s the problem.The Broadway Living plan only sounded great to those instigating it and running it. The two major developments earmarked to happen under it were Gurnell and Perceval House. Both never got past planning in the end, at least as the council envisaged them.Gordon is correct that viewing councils as entrepreneurs is a poor call. They are profligate with public money at the best of times.Ealing compounded its mistakes by failing to keep the statutory monitoring reports for years, with no explanation, so keeping track of what was really being built and by whom.Simply saying they couldn’t build council houses because tenants would just by them isn’t a reason not to build them. A lot of tenants don’t want the headaches of home ownership, preferring secure long term tenancies at reasonable rents.

Simon Hayes ● 5d

It is probably worth going over what actually happened here because there seems to be a fairly profound misunderstanding of the situation. I'm not sure where Simon got the idea that I said the council hadn't borrowed any money to fund this — borrowing more was the whole point. The council can get funds from Public Works Loan Board (PWLB) at relatively low rates. It took out a huge loan to fund Broadway Living which would have had to pay higher rates if it went to the market. I can't claim to fully understand why it was done this way but it is safe to assume that there was a regulatory constraint which prevented the council just borrowing the money and developing properties directly. In 2014 doing it through an arms length management company was the only practical way. My guess would be that the government of the time thought it was a good way to encourage councils to be more entrepreneurial — a terrible idea in my view. There were really two choices for the council — operate within existing constraints and build less housing or use this convoluted structure to get value out of the council's land bank. I can almost imagine the meeting in which this was agreed talking about the huge potential gains due to Crossrail and HS2. This would have made perfect sense at the time. It is possible that the only alternative to this structure was to sell landbank to developers. Quick and easy in terms of raising money but I can understand why it would have been felt that the council would have been short changed if this had been the approach. While I always thought Broadway Living was a bad idea, I have to admit I am not putting forward any sensible ideas as to what the right thing to do would have been but neither are those who are the most critical of the council about this. It would be interesting to hear an informed view about what they should have done instead.

Gordon Southwell ● 5d

The Lefty Swerve, you can GUARANTEE a Lefty will pull it EVERY time when a discussion is not going quite their way - swerve onto a totally unrelated topic and hope your "adversary" doesn't notice the switch/swerve.

Rosco White ● 6d

Blair and Brown had 13 years between them to reverse the stupidity of that decision. They chose not to. You really can't expect to keep getting away with the classic deflection technique forever you really can't it's time to put some maturity into your arguments rather than simply posting links and bleating about how good Liebour were

N V Brooks ● 6d

And just look at the mess of Mrs Thatcher's failed experiment of just privatising water...

Philippa Bond ● 6d

It's a particularly stupid approach to defend Liebore in the first place, let alone have blind faith in them.The Conservatives were/are only marginally better but to vote Liebore, you really do need help.Liebore screw up and cost us dearly in EVERYTHING they do, EVERY time.As I say....... Keep Trashing Ealing, Vote Liebore!

Rosco White ● 7d

It’s probably a good thing you aren’t a historian Philippa. You really don’t have a clue about evidence based research.The banking crisis wasn’t a recession, it was a breakdown of a system where governments were too trusting. As FSA chief Hector Sants said, a principles based approach doesn’t work with people who have no principles.HSBC has long had its headquarters in Canary Wharf. I went there a lot. It was under the jurisdiction of the FSA as a result. As were other struggling banks like Northern Rock, HBOS and Barclays.The recession came afterwards. I’m not defending the Tories, who did some very stupid things, but Blair and Brown were in power for 13 years between them and did a lot of damage. The effects of that are still having consequences today.But we’re moving away from the point. Labour run Ealing council have had hundreds of millions of pounds for house building over the last 16 years. That they chose to follow the (un)affordable housing route rather than traditional council housing is entirely their decision. Nobody put pressure on Bell and Mason to play at property speculation - which is what Broadway Living has been - it was entirely their decision.At your age one would have expected a modicum of common sense to have filtered through. Having blind faith in one set of politicians and blaming all the others is a particularly stupid approach. You ought to be more questioning.

Simon Hayes ● 7d

Both govts used PFI - odd how you should only mention one!How very strange that a bank called the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation aka the Honkers & Shankers should actually be a global bank!!It was a GLOBAL RECESSION that started in the US.

Philippa Bond ● 7d

Philippa, you are beyond parody. If you can’t find a link you just make up something that’s plausible in your limited imagination.The Blair government loosened the regulation art framework on British banks to such an extent that the overseeing body, the FSA was labelled the Fundamentally Supine Authority by Private Eye.Here’s some information for you. In 2008 I was working in Canary Wharf. I knew a lot of very senior bankers at various banks and some of them had cottoned on to the fact that their casino banking was leaving them exposed. One was Michael Geoghan, then the boss of HSBC (that’s a GLOBAL bank, by the way). He told me that his bank was hurriedly trying to shore up its finances as they knew trouble was brewing. They did this by selling off the tower housing their HQ to a Spanish property company for £1.09billion in late 2007. That was the biggest property deal in the UK at the time. It gave them enough liquidity to cover the risks they’d exposed themselves to.Needless to say the Spanish company, Metrovacesa, went bust because it was overexposed when the banking squeeze happened.Other banks went to borrow from wealth funds, notably Barclays which got loans from the Saudis. Other banks weren’t so sharp off the mark and paid the price.Remember Northern Rock? First of the UK banks to go bust? Nothing to do with the global crisis, but everything to do with banks being allowed free rein with people’s money.Of course you shall plough your furrow regardless. Maybe you should do a little research into the Blair-Brown PFI schemes. How did they work out?

Simon Hayes ● 8d

I used to think that you wore socialist blinkers Philippa but now I realized it's a bloody blindfold. Let's not forget who sold off the gold reserve when gold was a post-war low shall we?

N V Brooks ● 8d

The 2008 financial crash was the result of US banks and mortgage lenders' poor practices which triggered a GLOBAL CRISIS and not Blair and Brown just happening to be in Govt at the time. There are polar opposite knowledgeable opinions to yours. Govt borrowing is not the same as household borrowing.It is Govt rules and regulations which made it difficult to build social housing. There are huge lists of public buildings that the Tories sold off. Did that money go into social housing? No - because they don't believe in it. You should ask why. Outsourcing and privatising to save costs can easily increase the problems with maintenance when there is nobody or fewer people in a position with the knowledge and experience to oversee and check when work needs to be done - and to check that it is done properly.

Philippa Bond ● 8d

Digging ever deeper holes for yourself Philippa.Did you forget that your beloved Labour Party presided over the financial crash in 2008? All the economic problems since stem from that, which was largely down to Blair:Brown stripping back banking regulation and allowing the casino banking boom and bust. They bailed them out with our money, don’t forget.Nothing changed as a result of that other than austerity and blame games between politicians. One thing you ought to have learned by now is that politicians are never prepared for anything in this country, regardless of political persuasion.But coming back to local matters, you tacitly admit that Bell and Mason and their cronies are in the pockets of developers. It’s down to them that there’s a housing problem in Ealing. They have been running things for 16 years here and had ample opportunity to build good quality, sustainable and low rise housing. Instead we get poor quality towers and ‘solutions’ like sticking people in shipping containers on one of the most unpleasant roads in the borough.Meanwhile they sit on their hands when it comes to properly maintaining the social housing stock they are responsible for. Did you miss all the ombudsman reports over the years? Easily found with a google search.

Simon Hayes ● 8d

There is also the fact that there wouldn't have so much of a flap over an expected-sometime-pandemic if the Govt had paid proper attention to the Risk Assessments and strategies for dealing with one and weren't so blinkered and blindly intent on reducing spending.

Philippa Bond ● 8d

Well the Sunak story is hardly going to be recent, is it? But then Goldsmith Street was nearly 10 years ago. I'll look out some of the other versions of the story.I was trying to point out to you what happened following the success of Norwich's building of Goldsmith Street and how the problems of RTB was likely to still cause a problem for Norwich in trying to keep their new housing as social housing - because there has been a longtime need for it. You did after all say that Norwich had achieved building social housing.Of course the problem is also one of affordability and we should all know by now that it is a myth that housing that has been billed as "affordable" IS actually affordable to a great many people who need housing and it is because of this that social housing is still needed.I don't think you will ever have found me extolling the virtues of the Cannes trips that so many developers and LA people seem/seemed to go on because I've always thought that rather unsavoury just as I find MPs and political party followers who do this sort of shmoozing the same. I too have complained about those developers who seem to constantly manage to wriggle their way out of providing the social housing as part of their development that they have already agreed to and which you have to wonder whether they ever intended to and who either conspire or allow inferior and less safe products to be used on their buildings just so as to make a bigger profit.The heat is NOT getting to me. It isn't even really hot today and I've lived in much hotter places where they have learned to keep cool without resorting to AC and where buildings have been actually designed to suit the climate - and where trees are better respected.

Philippa Bond ● 8d

They say time is a great healer, obviously not in Philippines case still braying the Liebour mantra and disregarding the calamitous management if local government finances. But then facts have never heen Phillipa's strongpoint.

N V Brooks ● 9d

Well done Philippa. You managed to dig up a four year old Sunak story that doesn’t even support the actual claim you made. What he was saying there is he was putting funding into other areas. It’s not a scandal. Many would say Ealing isn’t a deprived area so shouldn’t get government funding either.Of course you blame the Tories for everything. You’ve done it for years.Ealing’s housing problem is one of affordability. Bell and Mason courted developers with shameless incentives, ignoring the needs of the people living here and those on the housing list. They didn’t even bother implementing CIL for years - belatedly introduced this year, although some developers grizzled enough to get an exemption. They knew that money would protect and improve infrastructure in the areas where development was happening, but too fond of their developer chums profits than the community they purport to serve.Obviously the heat is getting to you.

Simon Hayes ● 9d

Welcome back Phillipa!I look forward to more non-sensical, rambling defending of the Traitorous, Idiot & Corrupt Liebore.

Rosco White ● 9d

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/right-to-buy-overhaul-to-safeguard-social-housing

Philippa Bond ● 9d

You think I do that? How different is that from you dissing Labour decisions all the time? No party ever makes decisions that suit everyone unless perhaps it is one that is an unnecessary gift - and even that might cause some a crisis of conscience or extra work.When in Parliament there are decisions to be made on how to spend when there a lot of changes needing to be made and there are still many historical scandals to be righted. It's pretty pointless spending millions on investigations and then forgetting about them/not following through with any of the recommendations.Nobody likes to have anything taken away from them but there are often alternatives and it is right for those to be highlighted and those needing help to be able to get help.AI will now find something on funding formulas for you but here is one of many reports on it:https://news.sky.com/story/rishi-sunak-under-fire-for-claiming-he-worked-to-divert-money-from-deprived-urban-areas-when-chancellor-12666046

Philippa Bond ● 9d

Really Philippa? Strange how you haven’t put on a link for that claim.Councils can build social housing and are given large sums of money to do just that. They don’t even have to build them, but can purchase already completed units. Ealing council did this last year when buying 180 properties in Southall.You also ignore the fact that councils have planning departments and committees that have to approve applications. Rolling over and letting developers build what they like, and often with little or no social housing included. Ealing is particularly poor in that respect, as has been well documented over the years:And not all council housing tenants want to buy their properties. If they did then there wouldn’t be a single social housing unit anywhere.Why does everything you put on a forum end up blaming the Conservatives?They may have been a poor government in many respects but if you haven’t noticed there’s been a Labour administration in power for the last two years. And I won’t mention the 13 years of Blair and Brown that didn’t see the scrapping of Right to Buy.

Simon Hayes ● 9d

Rishi Sunak changed the Govt's funding formula funnelling money away from where social housing was most needed which meant that Goldsmith Street could not be replicated. If you search you will find more on this.

Philippa Bond ● 9d

https://www.ribaj.com/buildings/mikhail-riches-goldsmith-street-social-housing-norwich-passivhaus-stirling-prize/

Philippa Bond ● 9d

https://www.dezeen.com/2025/01/25/mikhail-riches-goldsmith-street-21st-century-architecture/

Philippa Bond ● 9d

As soon as the social housing in Norwich was built by that Council the Tory Govt closed the method by which it had been achieved. Whether any subsequently was actually sold off because of course of Right to Buy (even though that had been altered slightly) I haven't followed.The big problem was Mrs Thatcher's belief that everyone should be home owners and that there should be no social housing because of here belief that home owners would vote Tory. The Right to Buy was brought in and the money received went direct to the Treasury rather than being given to Councils to allow them to build more social housing. If we don't all know by now that "affordable housing" is not actually affordable to most people then we have learnt little.We have also had the disaster of Grenfell which is still not over with many buildings still dangerous to their occupants which have yet to be rectified followed by other failed building works because nobody seems to know how to build any more as we haven't been training anybody and many of those that did know either went home to other countries in Europe or retired.

Philippa Bond ● 9d

So much for the jolly boys and girls outings to Cannes.

Keith Iddon ● 18d

Yep, they should stick to the knitting.They won't, of course, and will continue to spunk our money.And The Idiot Vote just put 'em right back in for another four, long years.

Rosco White ● 18d

You haven’t quite got things correct Gordon.The council did take out a loan to fund Broadway Living, a whopping £400m sanctioned by Julian Bell when he was leader in 2020. This was four years after the Brexit referendum.Broadway Living never made any money. It was sucking huge tranches of money from the council accounts to cover all its losses in the early days. The ambitious plan - devised by those megaminds Bell and Peter Mason - was to knock down Perceval House and build huge ugly towers of tiny flats on the site (with no outdoor space provision). That hit the buffers with planning.Then the Gurnell site was earmarked as part of the BL portfolio but that was rejected by the planning committee, despite it being dominated by Labour councillors. Mainly because it was an inappropriate use of Metropolitan Open Land but also because the proposed development was simply the wrong option.Those of us who have been following this for years were well aware of the risky exposure for Ealing taxpayers. It’s still not clear how these losses will be covered, and you can pretty much bet it will be a lot more than the £5.5m being quoted. Henry Construction lost the council double that amount according to the unlamented Shital Manro, lately cabinet member for housing.Broadway Living was set up in early 2014. It wasn’t necessary as the council was perfectly able to build social housing as it and other local authorities had done for years. There are still councils building excellent housing elsewhere in the country - Norwich springs to mind - but Bell and Mason clearly had their heads turned by all those jollies to Cannes where they were wined and dined by various developers.This isn’t about Labour or Conservatives or Monster Raving Loonies. It’s about councils leaders with limited experience thinking there was easy money to be made from gambling on the housing market. That’s not their role. It’s just a local authority version of casino banking, and remember how badly that turned out.Here’s an article for you to read: https://ealingmatters.org.uk/ealing-council-to-borrow-400-million-to-finance-broadway-living-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/

Simon Hayes ● 18d

Negative equity is a loss — albeit an unrealised one. I presume it is based on the book value of the properties which may be well below the market value. In principle I agree with you that councils shouldn't be involving themselves in operations that are outside their normal competence and that they could never practically do better than private sector companies. I am pretty sure I said this at the time when Broadway Living was first proposed. However, it would be unfair not to look at this from the council's point of view. There is a massive shortage of housing, the market wasn't delivering what was needed, the council had unused land suitable for development and the opportunity to borrow at low interest rates. It was a tempting prospect that many councils fell for many, if not most of which were not 'Lefty Liberal Woke' authorities but Conservative ones too. They were not virtue signalling but trying to meet housing targets which would have been missed otherwise. That is the knitting of councils. If there hadn't been two major exogenous shocks since the founding of Broadway Living, the company would probably be sitting on significant gains in value for which the council would have deserved zero credit.

Gordon Southwell ● 19d

The £15 Million is not a Loss, it's Negative Equity. The major error in all this was LBE getting involved in "development" at all.Particularly under the proven incompetent Liebore Administration, originally headed by that financial genius Julian BellEnd.WHY can't LBE just stick to the knitting?Oh, I know, especially if you're a Lefty Liberal Woke Council, let's get involved in and spunk money on all sorts of idiocy that are pure virtue signalling and have FA to do with providing Effective & Efficient Services to Council Tax Paying Residents.

Rosco White ● 19d

Do you know what kind of flats the empty ones are e.g. market sale, affordable, social rent?

On Broadway Living, the current loss is £6.65million not £15million. That figure will rise or decline based on the direction of the housing market — at this stage the betting is likely to be an increase but we'll probably never know as it will be subsumed in the housing account.

Although the whole thing has clearly been a disaster, the council is justified in pointing out that all councils that went down the route of arms length management companies to try and kick start housebuilding have had problems. The outcome in Ealing is trivial compared to places like Croydon. The logic behind setting up Broadway Living was sound. It was the best way to reduce borrowing costs. Its failure was inevitable due to rising interest rates and construction costs but even experienced private sector housebuilders are struggling at the moment. When it was set up nobody was saying — hang on we are going to leave the EU making it much more expensive to build homes and Russia is going to invade Ukraine causing more inflation and higher interest rates. The major error in all this was the appointment of Henry Construction although there is a possibility that the failure of this company might have saved the council from even greater losses because they would have spent more on schemes that they were then unable to sell.

Gordon Southwell ● 19d

The incompetence of the Council in managing these developments is extraordinary. I have some knowledge of the new housing on Buckingham Avenue, near Perivale Library, as it’s just around the corner from me.There’s a development of allegedly 41 new flats, though I counted 39, on a council estate of about 150 flats. It’s easy to identify the empty new build flats as they have no curtains (so one can see they are completely unfurnished). Assuming every flat with curtains is occupied, there are 15 unoccupied flats where building work was finished at least one year ago. So that’s zero income from over 35% of the properties – not generating money is a sure way for any business to go bust.Reasons why they remain empty are not clear but one family living in these new blocks have spent more than 6 months trying to be rehoused as there’s no sound insulation between storeys (the people upstairs have small children); they are nearly always in the library when it’s open to avoid the noise in their home. I’ve heard another resident of these new flats make the same complaint and that sewage does not drain away properly, creating unpleasant smells in his flat. What nightmares there are at other sites one can only imagine.

Vlod Barchuk ● 19d

Think how many services could have been saved or improved had these incompetents not been allowed near the purse strings.HANG YOUR HEAD IN SHAME anyone who voted these people back into office.

N V Brooks ● 25d