Posts
Private Eye reports that LBWF is England’s third most complained about council, while LBWF admits its own complaints procedure is so bad it brings ‘financial and reputational’ risks
The latest issue of Private Eye (no.1681, 07/08-20/08/26) includes the following: Coincidentally, the LBWF 2025-26 Annual Governance Statement (AGS) has just been published, and this gives a dismal picture of how LBWF handles its own complainants. The AGS starts with the frank admission that ‘the current level of overdue complaints across both Stage 1 and Stage 2 does not meet the standards set out by the Ombudsmen, nor does it align with the level of customer service the council expects to provide to its residents’, and then goes on to explain why this is happening: What’s even more alarming,... »
New research reveals that LBWF repeated its failings over Whitefield many times elsewhere, suggesting it has had a more general child safeguarding problem than previously ever admitted
As hitherto reported (see links), the recent Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review (LCSPR) of child abuse at Whitefield during 2014-17 concludes that (a) there were various problems with the pupils’ statutory education, health and care (EHC) plans; (b) some of the LBWF staff involved in the case lacked professional curiosity, and adopted the wrong focus; and (c) LBWF had worked with the other safeguarding agencies in a way which was ‘fragmented and lacked co-ordination’. The LCSPR provides no broader context for these failings, which is a pity, because a search through the relevant sources ... »
The Whitefield Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review (3): Leigh Day now pursuing civil claims including against the London Borough of Waltham Forest, and related press coverage
(1) Part of Leigh Day’s press release, posted on 30 July 2026: (2) Marco Marcelline in the Waltham Forest Echo, dated 30 July 2026: https://walthamforestecho.co.uk/2026/07/30/council-buried-whitefield-abuse-report-after-schools-legal-threat/ (3) Jonathan Ames in The Times, dated 31 July 2026: (4) Noel Titheradge, the journalist who firsts broke the Whitefield story, for the BBC, dated 31 July 2026: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq89757z9vyo »
The Whitefield Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review (2): more confusion and controversies
Further to an earlier post (see links) there are two additional points that are worth making about the contents of the Whitefield Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review (LCSPR). The first concerns what appears to be some confusion about basic facts. At paragraph 1.2, right at the start of the document, the LCSPR describes how, in 2014-17, children were locked in the ‘calming rooms’ for ‘prolonged periods of seclusion’, and subject to ‘inappropriate physical restraint’ and ‘other restrictive and harmful practices’. Plus, it continues, this went on without a... »
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 illega... »
The Whitefield Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review (1): what it says, what it – very regrettably – overlooks, and why it fails
This post looks in some detail at the recently published Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review (LCSPR) regarding the historic child abuse at Whitefield School (or, to give it its formal title ‘Learning from the past: The use of restrictive practices, including seclusion, in a school for children with additional needs’). First, a couple of observations about how the LCSPR was set up and then actioned. There has been some confusion about timings, but the following is the current best guess. LBWF and partners decided to set up the LCSPR in August 2024; the then Leader, Cllr. Grace Williams, an... »
The Review into historic child abuse at Whitefield is due out next week, but questions persist about which organisations kept vital evidence, and which didn’t
It is said that the Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review (LCSPR) into child abuse at Whitefield School during 2014-17 finally will be released next week, having taken an astonishing 16 months longer than the official guidance recommends. However, even at this eleventh hour, research is still revealing new concerns about the existence of evidence relating to the abuse, and the following looks at one significant example. Since the passing of the Children Act in 2004, all schools in Waltham Forest (as everywhere else) have been required to complete an annual safeguarding audit, referred to as... »
Nine years after Grenfell, 64 of LBWF’s 65 low-rise and high-rise housing blocks are still not fire safe. How can this have been allowed to happen?
In 2020, after it was involved in several fire safety scandals, including litigation with a supplier, LBWF began a remediation programme (RP) to bring its housing stock ‘up to the most modern…safety standard’, this being forecast to cost £40m.. Previous posts on this blog have looked at the RP, and shown that in the early days there was some degree of progress, but more recently this has slowed. Now, unpublished returns forwarded in April of this year by LBWF to the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) confirm the trend. The headline findings are that, as of April, 64 of LBWF’s 65 low-rise and hi... »
Journalist Andrew Kersley’s investigation of Waltham Forest resident Tracey Turnell’s tragic death causes a stir, but after at first feigning interest, the Greens quickly chicken out
Journalist Andrew Kersley’s investigation of Waltham Forest resident Tracey Turnell’s tragic death, published on 30 May in The Londoner, has deservedly provoked much positive interest and comment (see below). But there is one grating note. After publication, the newly appointed Green Party cabinet member in charge of adult social care, Cllr. Martin Edobor, was in contact with Mr. Kersley and ‘said he was open to meeting to discuss what could be done’. To Mr. Kersley this seemed promising, as, after all, Labour previously had ignored both him, and others who had raised LBWF’s longstanding failu... »