Posts

Waltham Forest’s Great and Good – from Dr. Stella Creasy MP, to senior police officers, via LBWF Leader Grace Williams – come a cropper about faith-based zealotry…yet again

October 17, 2024 Cllr. Grace Williams, faith groups, Stella Creasy MP

Over the years, senior members of the borough’s establishment on occasion have enthusiastically supported faith organisations – Christian and Muslim – which turn out to espouse unattractive values, values that no Town Hall officer or mainstream politician or police officer would express in public. A classic example occurred in 2016, when a clutch of Labour councillors, (including the now Deputy Leader of Waltham Forest Council, Cllr. Ahsan Khan) attended an event in the Town Hall to celebrate the visiting Pakistani Senator Sirajul Haq, this happy gathering captured for posterity on Facebook: It is unclear who knew what about Senator Haq, but it later took only ten minutes research... »

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LBWF CEO Linzi Roberts-Egan’s message to council staff: we are in a much more challenging financial position than we hoped we would be, so save money or else!

October 10, 2024 LBWF finance, LBWF spin, Senior staff pay

LBWF CEO Linzi Roberts-Egan has just circulated the following message to staff: ‘We are facing a significant budget deficit this year, with a £17million forecasted overspend. This is a much more challenging financial position than we hoped we would be in at this point in the year, and together we must all take immediate action to address it. This will mean making difficult decisions over the coming months and will require a step-change from us all to reduce costs and think about how every pound is spent. All teams across the Council are being asked to develop action plans to achieve additional in year saving targets, ensure that we live within our means and where possible come in under... »

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BBC undercover investigation again highlights Waltham Forest’s appalling food hygiene standards, raising doubts about whether LBWF is carrying out its responsibility for enforcement

October 7, 2024 food hygiene, LBWF spin

It’s a well established fact that Waltham Forest has serious food hygiene problems, being home to, as of September 2024, the highest percentage of food businesses in England and Wales rated zero to two stars on the Food Standards Agency (FSA) zero to five star rating system. But today the BBC publishes the results of an undercover operation that makes the problem look even worse than so far has been imagined. Because what the BBC establishes is that, on the ground, fiddling the star system is ‘rife’. Earlier this year, it visited a number of businesses in the Leyton area, and found that no less than 27, ‘all within a couple of miles of each other’, were publicly misstating their star rating,... »

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The number of senior staff in the Town Hall keeps rising, with a 38 per cent increase between 2021 and 2023 alone, but the explanation remains a mystery

October 4, 2024 Redundancies, Senior staff pay

Recently released figures show that, between 2021 and 2023, the number of senior staff in the Town Hall increased from 317 to 437, that is by 38 per cent. This continues a trend going back to 2015 (the earliest year that is comparable): As a graphic illustration of the cohort that has been created, in 2023 the top team in the Town Hall consisted of the CEO, Linzi Roberts-Egan, her deputy, four ‘Strategic Directors’, 16 ‘Corporate Directors’, 16 ‘Directors’, and then an array of their deputies. Examining this expansion in more detail, it appears that some of it occurred because of new appointments (see links for an example), and some because as existing staff moved up or between grades, a pro... »

LBWF’s glaring failure to obey official – and mandatory – transparency rules: a new twist, as evidence emerges of a major data breach

September 18, 2024 LBWF spin, Local Government Transparency Code, Mark Hynes

Two previous posts on this blog (see links) have explored LBWF’s compliance with the mandatory Local Government Transparency Code, the document which specifies the 14 categories of information that all councils must publish, and at what intervals. The major finding that emerges is that in many cases, and for some years, LBWF has failed to act as it should. But it’s recently become evident that even where LBWF has regularly published the required information, this has not necessarily gone smoothly. Indeed, in the case of the requirement to publish a quarterly listing of all expenditure over £500, what’s been provided is apparently so flawed that it has had to be withd... »

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