Posts

As a programme to retrain the Town Hall’s frontline managers is revealed to have been deeply flawed, doubts again surface about how LBWF spends public money

September 26, 2025 EDI 0

In the past few years LBWF has vigorously pursued an equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) agenda aimed at transforming its internal culture, an agenda that has involved all employees, from top to bottom; cost thousands of pounds; and, because delivered via various kinds of training, eaten up significant amounts of staff time. Little has been said about this agenda in public, but Freedom of Information requests have begun to uncover some of the details (see link, below). One very pertinent issue is whether the agenda has benefited either those working in the Town Hall or, more importantly, those providing the funding – local residents. Here, the evidence so far is very thin, but ther... »

Cathall Labour Councillor Jonathan O’Dea dropped as a candidate at next year’s local elections: is it because he has spoken publicly about the Whitefield child abuse scandal?

September 19, 2025 Whitefield 0

In the past few weeks, the Waltham Forest Echo has reported extensively on the deselection of longstanding Cathall Councillor Jonathan O’Dea. Earlier this year, the paper reveals, Cllr. O’Dea applied to stand again for Labour in next year’s local elections, but on the advice of the party’s Chief Whip, Cllr. Steve Terry, was turned down. Cllr. O’Dea was told that what counted against him was his poor campaigning record, and the fact that he had submitted a motion to the local Labour Party calling for a ceasefire in Gaza at a time when this was frowned upon. Cllr. O’Dea believed that the evidence fully refuted both these points, and so appealed, but was again rejected. Reflecting on ... »

Ofsted, LBWF, and the Whitefield School CCTV cameras

August 27, 2025 child safeguarding, Whitefield 0

This post examines how Ofsted and LBWF investigated allegations of child abuse at Whitefield School, and in particular what use they made of evidence provided by CCTV cameras. At first sight, it might be assumed that such a matter would be straightforward, but in fact, as the following paragraphs show, it turns out to be rather convoluted, and puzzling. Here’s the story. As previously reported by this blog (see links, below), the Whitefield scandal first became public in January 2017, when, following a complaint by a parent, Ofsted inspectors visited the school and found that a ‘small number of pupils’ had been placed ‘against their will’ inside ‘calming rooms’, in reality ‘three secure, pad... »

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The Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman reprimands LBWF over its complaints handling, citing ‘unacceptable’ delays, ‘poor quality, incomplete responses’, and waste of staff time

August 8, 2025 Ombudsman 0

Every year, the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman sends each council a review letter which contains some tailored observations about their complaints handling. The review letter for 2024-25 just sent to LBWF, specifically CEO Linzi Roberts-Egan, includes the following: ‘During the year, there were several occasions when our investigations were delayed by your Council’s failure to respond in a timely way to our requests for information. In one case the delays were such that we took the unusual step of threatening to issue a witness summons before we received the information we needed. This is not a step we take lightly. In addition to the delays, there were instances of poor qualit... »

Update: the latest official figures show that 63 of LBWF’s 64 low-rise and high-rise housing blocks are still not fire safe, mainly because of ‘Resources’, and ‘available budgets’

August 6, 2025 fire hazards, fire safety 0

In 2020, triggered by the fallout from the Grenfell tragedy, LBWF finally addressed the fact that very few, if any, of its large and small housing blocks were fire safe, and began a large-scale remediation programme to put matters right. It might be assumed that, by now, this programme would have delivered substantial results, leaving LBWF tenants free from worry. But data recently released by the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) under the Freedom of Information Act again shows that any such assumption would be hugely misplaced. For the astonishing truth is that, as of March this year, all but one block still had what the RSH term ‘life-critical fire-safety defects’, some internal (flat ent... »

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