Burnham-ism: a warning from (Waltham Forest) history

Yes, definitely, let’s devolve power and money to the localities, because ‘communities know better than anyone else what’s right for them’.

Power to the people!

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, if this story is to be believed, plenty.

In the early 2000s, the government gave LBWF many millions of public money to help the most deprived neighbourhoods in the borough. Now read on.

Postscript

It’s important to add that the police did not act on my complaint, and accordingly it should be underlined that none of those mentioned in this article were found to have engaged in any kind of illegal activity.

However, it turned out that this was the first shot in what was a long campaign, a campaign which culminated in a specially appointed Independent Panel slamming LBWF’s ‘deep-rooted culture of non-compliance with procedures to prevent fraud’, and the then Leader, Cllr. Chris Robbins, having to publicly apologise to local residents ‘for the failure of the council’.

But readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn that the Independent Panel’s astute comment ‘Good organisations learn from problems and rectify them. Waltham Forest appears to do neither’ proved right, because afterwards almost nothing changed.

For more, see the BBC’s ‘Scathing report on council chaos’ at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8381724.stm

and the links, below.