North London Business

LBWF and public-private partnerships: (2) North London Ltd.

LBWF’s relationship with North London Ltd. (NLL) illuminates a second way of organising public-private partnerships. NLL is a private company, formed in 2005, whose business is ‘Other service activities not elsewhere classified’. LBWF has close links with NLL, not (as with NPS London Ltd.) because of share ownership, but rather because of, first, mutual involvement in a network of allied instituti... »

North London Ltd. – an enigma wrapped in a mystery?

A name that crops up in the context of the E11 BID Co. fiasco is North London Ltd. (NLL), a company that was launched in 2004 and apparently went into compulsory liquidation ten years later, put there by its creditors. According to a press release of 2013, NLL was ‘the sub-regional business support agency for North London’ and worked ‘to accelerate business growth and development and attract inwar... »

Disposing of Council assets: the Waltham Forest Business Board and the Argall car parks

Councils inevitably dispose of unwanted public assets from time to time, and it is always interesting to discover exactly how they do so, and who benefits. The following is a tale of what happens in Waltham Forest, and as might be predicted, it  provokes more questions than it answers.  On 14 June 2011, the LBWF Cabinet agreed to lease the Argall Avenue car parks to ‘BID’, a fair assumption being ... »

LBWF, the Local Authority Business Growth Initiative programmes, and the Waltham Forest Business Board, E11 Bid Co., and North London Ltd.

A couple of years ago, I started hearing some very surprising things about Leytonstone’s Business Improvement District (BID) company, the E11 Bid Co.. The allegation, in short, was that the directors of the company had failed to keep proper books and neglected to pay their taxes; run up substantial debts; and as a consequence jeopardised the company’s ‘going concern’ status... »