Independent Panel

Councillor Keith Rayner revealed to have had some difficulty with, ahem, his own council tax payments

October 28, 2019 Cllr. Keith Rayner, Independent Panel

A valuable investigation by Lewis Berrill, Chief Reporter of the East London and West Essex Guardian, has revealed that in the past few years four LBWF councillors – Rajar Anwar, Kastriot Berberi, Jemma Hemsted, and Keith Rayner – have been issued with notices for late payment of council tax, with Messrs Anwar and Rayner also then each receiving a court summons, see https://www.guardian-series.co.... »

LBWF dodges the Local Government Association’s acclaimed peer review scheme, and it’s reasonable to ask: why?

December 1, 2017 Cllr. Clare Coghill, Independent Panel, Martin Esom

Since 2011, the Local Government Association (LGA) has run and financed a scheme called Corporate Peer Challenge (CPC), which it sees as ‘a core element of our sector-led improvement offer to local authorities’. As the name suggests CPC involves small teams of experienced officers and councillors visiting participating councils in order to understand how they work, challenge assumptions, and share... »

Documenting Past Failures: (7) The Independent Panel and a ‘scathing’ report on LBWF’s ‘deep-rooted culture of non-compliance with procedures to prevent fraud’.

March 9, 2015 Independent Panel

In mid-2009, the crisis around the BNI finally came to a head. The Council had spent c. £116,000 on a series of seven or eight disparate inquiries into the programme, (Waltham Forest Guardian, 17 June 2009)  culminating in the PwC report, but some were obviously flawed, few convinced, and almost all begged further questions. Negative press coverage continued, as when the Waltham Forest Guardian re... »