Private Eye reports the new LBWF asbestos scandal (2)
From issue 1586, 18/11/22-01/12/22. »
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LBWF’s Town Hall asbestos scandal: an update and comment
Local Democracy Reporter Josh Mellor yesterday posted a story on the asbestos scandal under the amusing headline ‘Council investigating itself over former town hall asbestos’, here: https://walthamforestecho.co.uk/council-investigating-itself-over-former-town-hall-asbestos#article What follows is a complementary commentary, looking initially at how my own concerns have developed, before turning to scrutinize the context and substance of the council’s response. The key moment when I realised that something was not quite right about the way LBWF was dealing with asbestos in the Town Hall occurre... »
How Cann Hall councillors communicate with residents…
A resident writes: ‘We opened a community café and foodbank near that notice board, and wanted to put one of our A4 posters on display in it. We found out that – inexplicably – a local shopkeeper held the key, went to see her, and gave her a poster. She promised to put it up straightaway. Nothing happened. So we went to see her again. This time, she said she’d been busy, but promised to act. Nothing happened again. So we went to see her a third time, and on this occasion, because she wasn’t there, we gave a new poster to one of her staff, who promised to jog the owner’s memory. Still not... »
Private Eye reports the new LBWF asbestos scandal (1)
From issue 1583, 7-20/10/22. »
Leytonstone cartoonist Woox on LBWF and the Freedom of Information Act
(Reproduced by kind permission of Woox) »
Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request about the Walthamstow Mall, LBWF is caught out misusing one of the legislation’s exemption clauses, and has to eat crow
The LBWF e-mail pasted below is largely self-explanatory. However, the back story is less certain. Are LBWF officers really ignorant of the Freedom of Information Act’s Section 41? Or was this an attempt to pull the wool – to brandish apparent expertise, and bank on it not being cross-checked? Whatever the case, those involved emerge with little credit. In the recent past, because of Information Commissioner’s Office concern, Mark Hynes, who is LBWF Director of Governance and Law, as well as Data Protection Officer, has stated that all Freedom of Information responses are to ... »
The Health and Safety Executive censures one of LBWF’s contractors after finding a worker cleaning up dangerous dust from the Town Hall basement…with a broom
As might be predicted, knowing the revelations of the past, the more that emerges about LBWF’s recent attempts to deal with dangerous asbestos in the Town Hall, the dodgier the local authority looks. Consider the following. On 13 January 2020, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) informed LBWF that a complaint had been made about construction work in the Town Hall basement, which it summarised thus: ‘Drilling in the basement is causing a lot of brick dust to go out throughout the buildings, so much that it is setting off the fire alarms; and With the presence of asbestos in the basement, ther... »
Michelle Edwards launches a Twitter feed about her experiences in one of LBWF’s new low-rise blocks where, as she describes, ‘It has, and continues to be, hell’
Michelle Edwards is a respected local journalist who in the past campaigned on transparency and accountability, while at the same time writing a regular column for the Waltham Forest Echo about what it was like to live through her estate’s regeneration. More recently, Ms. Edwards has started writing a Twitter feed – https://twitter.com/NewBuildHell – about her move into a new low-rise block and the dispiriting events thereafter. Much coverage of such change tends to be sugary, with developers and councils patting each other on the back. Ms. Edwards peels away the verbiag... »
Crime up, police sanction detections down, yet the LBWF Safer Neighbourhoods Board hasn’t met since November 2021
In the 12 months ending August 2022, crime in Waltham Forest rose 1.9 per cent, while sanction detections (charges, summonses, cautions reprimands, final warning, etc.) fell by the same amount. Turning to the most common crime in the borough, violence against the person, there were 6,710 offences in 2021-22, 2.3 per cent down on the previous year, which seems a plus, though one that is considerably diminished by the fact that sanction detections had also declined, and by a whopping 13.4 per cent. Meanwhile research released in October 2021 revealed that almost two thirds of residents repo... »
Complaint upheld: Cllrs Eglin, Ihenachor, Imre, and Malik found not to have declared their interests, and LBWF drops links to councillors’ party political websites
A recent post (see link, below) recorded that (a) Cllrs Rhiannon Eglin, Chrystal Ihenachor, Sazimet-Palta Imre, and Zafran Malik had not declared their interests, and (b) several other councillors, including Clyde Loakes, were using their profile pages on the LBWF website to link to Twitter feeds that were blatantly partisan, in contravention of the 1986 Local Government Act’s clear instruction that ‘A local authority shall not publish any material which, in whole or in part, appears to be designed to affect public support for a political party’. Happily, a complaint to LBWF about these m... »