Posts

NPS London Ltd. (now re-named Evolve Norse Ltd.) has advised LBWF on managing asbestos since 2007, but does that inspire much confidence?

May 24, 2023 Asbestos at St. Mary's School, Town Hall asbestos

One organisation that sometimes pops up on the margins of public discussion about how LBWF has managed asbestos in the past few years is NPS London Ltd., recently renamed Evolve Norse Ltd. (so hereafter NPSL/EN) which is a joint venture between – and this gets complicated – LBWF and (via a subsidiary, NPS Property Consultants Ltd.) the national holding company Norse Group Ltd., itself, rather surprisingly, the child of Norfolk County Council. NPSL/EN was formed in 2007, taking over what was previously LBWF’s in-house architecture and building consultancy service, with the staff transferred over. Subsequently, it is said to have been involved in some 650 LBWF projects, including bi... »

LBWF’s ‘traffic calming’ measures again in the dock: an expert paramedic argues they worsen ambulance response times and so may increase fatalities in health emergencies

May 18, 2023 LBWF spin, Mini Holland

In a previous guest post (see links, below), a local resident examined the ‘traffic calming’ measures which LBWF is installing across the borough, and pointed out that they have a severe impact of those living nearby, producing amongst other things noise pollution and household damage. What follows casts light on another aspect of the problem, the way that the measures slow London Ambulance Service (LAS) call outs to serious cases like cardiac arrest and severe allergic reaction. The author has worked as a LAS paramedic, and deserves to be taken very seriously indeed. Waltham Forest Matters is grateful for such a detailed and comprehensive contribution. ‘1. I attended meetings with local aut... »

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Has LBWF come clean about Town Hall asbestos to its employees, as the law demands? The evidence suggests not, and that’s a serious matter

May 15, 2023 Town Hall asbestos

As Director of Governance and Law Mark Hynes’ asbestos management investigation limps into its seventh month, so far without any tangible findings, it becomes ever more obvious that one of the major obstacles to him reaching completion is the absence of key evidence that would prove LBWF complied with the law. One revealing illustration of this is some recently unearthed revelations about how LBWF has communicated about asbestos with its employees. All employers have a responsibility to consult their employees over health and safety matters under the Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 1977, and the Health and Safety (Consultation with Employees) Regulations 1996, but th... »

Who’d have guessed it? A senior policeman talks nonsense about hate crime at a LBWF Scrutiny Committee meeting, and councillors remain silent

May 9, 2023 Policing/crime

A previous post (see link below) expressed disquiet about the fact that both LBWF and the local Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) have been pursuing hate crime in the borough as a priority, even though the evidence shows it is a small-scale phenomenon that doesn’t much worry residents. What follows is written in similar vein, and suggests that not only have LBWF and the police failed to properly monitor what they are doing about hate crime, but they also seem to be remarkably ill-informed about aspects of the law. The story is as follows. At a meeting of the LBWF Communities Scrutiny Committee (CSC) on 13 July 2021, the councillors were joined by Inspector Marcus Walton of the MPS in order t... »

A local resident writes in about LBWF ‘traffic calming measures’ that do the opposite! UPDATED

April 27, 2023 LBWF spin, Mini Holland

The post that follows, contributed by a local resident, describes how badly thought-out traffic calming schemes in Waltham Forest are producing damaging consequences. It is a valuable case study in itself, but doubly welcome because it further substantiates two of this blog’s long-standing observations – that LBWF’s traffic calming/ active travel initiatives are often subject to spin, with the upsides inflated and the downsides ignored; and that despite their rhetoric, Waltham Forest councillors and officers are poor at responding to residents’ legitimate grievances, a major reason, of course, why LBWF is rated the sixth most complained about local authority in England. So over to our ... »

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