Posts

The Goddarts House fire safety fiasco: an update

January 21, 2020 fire hazards, fire safety, Goddarts House

Previous posts have looked at the controversy over flat entrance doors (FEDs) at Goddarts House sheltered housing in Walthamstow, particularly the issue of whether or not they offer sufficient resistance in the event of a fire, and what follows is an update. Regular readers will remember that when LBWF, though its repairs and maintenance contractor, Osborne, replaced the FEDs at Goddarts in late 2017, it was purported to be an upgrade. FEDs are classified as either FD30 or FD60, the numerals denoting how many minutes of fire protection are guaranteed. The new doors at Goddarts, LBWF and Osborn... »

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The East London Credit Union: some new facts, but confusion, maybe evasion, persists

January 13, 2020 East London Credit Union

 Last month, LBWF divulged some more information about its subsidisation of the now collapsed East London Credit Union (ELCU). The focus is on a large grant that LBWF awarded to ELCU in 2015 in order to help it support vulnerable residents and small businesses. Previous references to this grant were both contradictory and deficient as to important details. In a book published during 2017, a chapter co-authored by then ELCU CEO Michelle Howlin claimed that, two years earlier, LBWF had made ‘a £500,000 investment [in ELCU] to deliver a range of initiatives, including business lending’. Yet in a ... »

Private Eye on fire safety at Goddarts House sheltered housing complex, Walthamstow

December 20, 2019 Cllr.Louise Mitchell, fire hazards, fire safety, Goddarts House

  (From Private Eye, No.1512 21/12/19-09/01/20) »

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Mark Hynes, LBWF Director of Governance and Law, receives a second successive rebuke from the Information Commissioner’s Office: what’s going on?

December 16, 2019 Freedom of Information Act, Mark Hynes

As a previous post has revealed, though LBWF’s Director of Governance and Law, Mark Hynes, doubles as the council’s Data Protection Officer, his understanding of how information on individuals should be handled on occasion is completely at odds with the experts of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Some recent correspondence provides a further illustration of Mr. Hynes’ embarrassing divergence from the legal mainstream. The letter reproduced below from an ICO case officer to Mr. Hynes concerns a complaint that the redoubtable Waltham Forest Echo journalist, Michelle Edwards, has made... »

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London Borough of Waltham Forest: the local authority that can’t even finalise its annual accounts (1)

December 9, 2019 Cllr. Clare Coghill, LBWF finance, LBWF spin

Every year, like other local authorities, LBWF is bound by law to produce its annual accounts, using an external auditor and a timetable specified by the Accounts and Audit Regulations of 2015. But this year, the procedure has gone wrong, indeed very wrong, and now there is a lively post mortem in progress about who is to blame, and what are the likely consequences. As regards the 2018-19 audit, LBWF knew the specified time frame well beforehand. Unaudited accounts were due by 31 May 2019, and audited accounts by 31 July 2019, so that the latter then could be signed off by the Audit and Govern... »

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John Cryer MP and anti-semitism

November 27, 2019 anti-semitism, John Cryer MP

All the recent talk of the Corbynistas’ anti-semitism brings to mind a post that appeared on this blog way back in 2017. That great advert for Labour meritocracy, John Cryer MP, had awoken from his usual deep slumber, and was holding forth at a Labour Conference fringe event. The BBC reported thus: ‘A senior Labour MP has said he is shocked at some of the anti-Semitic tweets by party members that come before its disciplinary panel. John Cryer said some of what is written “makes your hair stand up”, adding: “This stuff is redolent of the 1930s.” He was speaking at a fringe debate at the Labour ... »

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The East London Credit Union’s collapse: major new revelations, and the bad odour intensifies UPDATED

November 27, 2019 Cllr. Paul Douglas, East London Credit Union

As previous posts (referenced below) have pointed out, the collapse into administration on 11 September 2019 of that longstanding LBWF favourite, the East London Credit Union (ELCU), has left many questions unanswered. Gradually however, new information is trickling out, and some of it, to say the least, is both startling and deeply worrying, particularly about what has been going on in the Town Hall. The headline revelations are: LBWF states it gave ELCU £326,152 between 2014 and 2018, but the real figure is likely to be nearer c. £1m.. LBWF cannot produce any documentation authorising and re... »

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Fireproofing flat entrance doors at Goddarts sheltered housing in Walthamstow: another LBWF fiasco, which has left vulnerable residents in danger, and will cost a great deal of public money to rectify

November 18, 2019 Cllr.Louise Mitchell, fire safety, Goddarts House

This post looks at what LBWF has done – in fact more accurately, has not done – over the past few years to make sure that flat entrance doors (FEDs) at Goddarts House sheltered housing in Walthamstow are fireproof. It’s a story of official bungling, which endangered life and limb, and probably will cost the public purse hundreds of thousands of pounds, but also – more positively – of one determined resident’s struggles to put things right. First some background. When serious fire occurs, FEDs are a matter of life and death. A suitably robust FED, properly fitted, and regularly inspected,... »

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LBWF CEO Martin Esom, the Prevent anti-terrorist programme, and the politics of illusion

November 1, 2019 Martin Esom, Prevent

Perhaps curiously, given LBWF’s decidedly chequered record in identifying and addressing Islamist extremism, Martin Esom, the council CEO, chaired the pan London Prevent Board (LPB) from 2012 to late 2018. Earlier this year, the Local Government Chronicle interviewed Mr. Esom about his time at the LPB, and his views are worth exploring, not least because they may well feed into the government’s reassement of Prevent, which is currently ongoing. It must be said that Mr. Esom’s logic in the interview is sometimes difficult to follow, clouded (amongst other things) by a whiff of score settling. B... »

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Councillor Keith Rayner revealed to have had some difficulty with, ahem, his own council tax payments

October 28, 2019 Cllr. Keith Rayner, Independent Panel

A valuable investigation by Lewis Berrill, Chief Reporter of the East London and West Essex Guardian, has revealed that in the past few years four LBWF councillors – Rajar Anwar, Kastriot Berberi, Jemma Hemsted, and Keith Rayner – have been issued with notices for late payment of council tax, with Messrs Anwar and Rayner also then each receiving a court summons, see https://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/17993449.waltham-forest-councillor-summoned-court-council-tax/ Cllr. Rayner’s case is certainly the most serious, as he was issued with two notices for late payment in 2015-16; a further remin... »