In early June of this year, I asked LBWF under the Freedom of Information Act for a list of its current Prevent contracts, with for each its start and finish dates, the name of the contractor, the value of the contract, and a brief description of what the contract aims to achieve. A few days ago, my request was refused, with LBWF arguing as follows: ‘Waltham Forest Council recognises the public in... »
The previous ten posts in this series have looked at LBWF’s record of extensive failure over the past decade or so, and it is now apposite to offer some general conclusions. First, it is notable that, by and large, the cases examined share some common characteristics, which may be summarised as follows: (a) rule breaches On paper, LBWF has always possessed clear rules to govern programme inception... »
Over the coming months, and at irregular intervals, I’ll be posting Documenting Past Failures pieces, which will look at some of the episodes that I’ve been involved in since 2004, broadly in chronological sequence. To start with, I’ll be looking mostly at how LBWF used Neighbourhood Renewal Fund monies. The background is as follows. In 2001, the government launched a new Nationa... »
Here’s an article that I contributed to the Dec14/Jan15 issue of Labour Briefing (which I reproduce with the kind permission of the editors). It looks at some recent Waltham Forest history, and gives more than a clue as to why this blog was set up. Waltham Forest’s missing millions ‘In 2009, spurred on by a spate of bad publicity about its flagship Neighbourhood Renewal Fund (NRF... »