At last night’s Full Council Annual General Meeting (Tuesday, 18 May), a new Ealing Council leadership and cabinet was announced.

Councillor Peter Mason was elected as Leader of Ealing Council, and one of the first things he did was to announce his new cabinet:

• Councillor Deirdre Costigan, deputy leader and member for climate action
• Councillor Bassam Mahfouz, member for decent living incomes
• Councillor Steve Donnelly, member for inclusive economy
• Councillor Lauren Wall, member for genuinely affordable homes
• Councillor Shital Manro, member for good growth
• Councillor Jasbir Anand, member for thriving communities
• Councillor Kamaljit Kaur Nagpal, member for fairer start
• Councillor Aysha Raza, member for tackling inequality
• Councillor Josh Blacker, member for healthy lives

Councillor Mason said: “Yesterday I announced my cabinet team, which reflects the diversity in gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, faith, culture and geography of our borough.

“It is the honour of my life to be elected to lead on an agenda of change and doing things differently.

“I will lead an open, inclusive and transparent council, that engages local people in the challenges we face.

“The past year has been relentless. Responding to the pandemic has been the biggest challenge we have ever faced, and the residents of Ealing have collectively risen to that challenge with a million acts of loving kindness and bags and bags of resilience.

“As we emerge from the worst period of this pandemic, there are new and huge challenges ahead. To respond, I and the new cabinet, are setting three priorities:

• Rebuilding our economy, returning good well-paid jobs to our borough and delivering the next generation of genuinely affordable homes.
• Greening our borough by tackling the climate crisis, cleaning our air and ensuring the borough we build is sustainable.
• Relentlessly tackling poverty and inequality that blights too many lives and disproportionately holds back all too many people from achieving their dreams and aspirations.

“These are challenges that we need to tackle together, and I look forward to sharing more on how we are going to tackle them in the coming weeks.  I give you my commitment that my focus will be on changing Ealing for the better.”

The new leadership and cabinet will now work with council officers to develop plans to deliver on the new priorities.