Posts

Auditors KPMG slam LBWF’s failure to achieve value for money and realise ‘targeted savings’

January 7, 2026 LBWF finance, Linzi Roberts-Egan 0

KPMG is currently working on LBWF’s accounts for the year to 31 March 2025, and in that connection recently issued an interim report. Much of this is uncontroversial, but there is one set of findings that stand out like a sore thumb: ‘At this stage of our work, we have identified significant risk of weakness in the financial sustainability arrangement put in place for Council to achieve Value for money [sic]. We have noted that the Council is facing significant pressures due to increases in cost of living, lack of funding and pressures on the SEND budget resulting in significant cost overruns. The Council has experienced significant overspends in the year and have failed to achieved the targ... »

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LBWF claims penury, but compared to 2020-21 it now employs 9 per cent more staff, and pays out 36 per cent more in wages

November 26, 2025 Redundancies, Senior Staff Pay 0

Both the current LBWF Leader, Cllr. Grace Williams, and her predecessor, Cllr. Clare Coghill, repeatedly have warned that LBWF is under financial pressure, and argued that this necessitates ‘savings’ and service cuts. Their particular focus frequently has been on annual deficits, which are said to have accelerated from Covid times to anywhere between £20m. and £30m. today (the exact sum changes with the weather). Just last week, Cllr. Williams upped the ante further when she told the Waltham Forest Echo that LBWF now was being forced to dip into its reserves, and if this went on, might need a government bailout within 18 months. In the light of such scary rhetoric, it comes as something... »

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LBWF repeatedly claims it is taking residents’ complaints seriously…but just as repeatedly fails to do so

November 18, 2025 Freedom of Information Act, Mark Hynes, Ombudsman 1

In the last few years, LBWF has repeatedly claimed that it is taking residents’ complaints seriously, and learning from them, explaining: ‘Complaints are an important way for an organisation to be accountable to the public, as well as providing valuable insights into organisational performance and the conduct of staff providing services to residents in order to drive improvement in service delivery’. Of course, many big corporates make similar noises, it’s become fashionable. Yet in this particular case, there is reason to be circumspect, because LBWF rhetoric is one thing, reality sometimes quite another.   This post takes a c... »

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LBWF, the Whitefield School abuse victims, and their special needs care plans: a discreditable failure, and one that reflects wider truths about local child safeguarding

October 24, 2025 child safeguarding, Whitefield 0

As previously noted, the January 2017 Ofsted report on Whitefield was the first to reveal the abuse that children had suffered in the school’s ‘calming rooms’ (see links), and it is no surprise to find that much subsequent discussion has focused on the same topic. However, the Ofsted report also made other observations about Whitefield, and one that deserves more attention than it has so far received is the following: ‘Leaders [at the school] were unable to show how parents and other professionals were made aware that pupils had been placed in… [the ‘calming rooms’]. Individual behaviour plans, EHC plans and pupils’ files do not include enough information about the use of these rooms. This h... »

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Hate crime in Waltham Forest update: LBWF and the police still treat it as a key priority, but the facts don’t support them

October 15, 2025 Policing/crime 0

In February 2023, a post on this blog examined hate crime in Waltham Forest, and queried why LBWF and the local police force was treating it as a key priority, worthy of enhanced financial and administrative support (see links, below). What follows looks at what has happened subsequently. Hate crime has continued to be prioritised. But are the doubts of earlier years also still present? First, a summary of the basic evidence. The only comprehensive series about hate crime is data collected by the police, and for the period February 2023 to September 2025 for Waltham Forest this reveals the following. (a) The volume of recorded hate crime has varied, with peaks and troughs, but there is no di... »

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