Posts

LBWF’s Violence Reduction Partnership aims to reduce knife crime, but after 5 years, £6.6m. of funding, and only disappointing results, it urgently needs a re-think

December 13, 2024 Policing/crime 0

In the middle years of the 2010s, there was escalating public disquiet in Waltham Forest about violent crime, particularly knife crime involving local youth, with newspaper reports focusing on both the volume of offences and the fact that the only a small number of perpetrators were being prosecuted (see links, below).  Accordingly, in November 2018, and largely as a response, LBWF launched a Violence Reduction Partnership (VRP), comprising its own staff and representatives of the police, schools, the heath service, the voluntary sector, businesses and the wider community, in order ‘to tackle violence and its root causes’, with, it was emphatically stated, ‘the wellbeing of young people at t... »

Private Eye reports LBWF’s latest fire safety scandal, the fact that, seven years after Grenfell, only one of its 63 low-rise and high-rise blocks of flats is fire safe

December 5, 2024 fire safety 0

From Private Eye 1638 6-19 December 2024 »

The Whitefield School child abuse scandal: the BBC publishes more awful revelations

November 27, 2024 child safeguarding, Cllr. Clare Coghill, Cllr. Grace Williams 0

The BBC has just published more awful revelations about the Whitefield School child abuse scandal, which can be read here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjw0e3zjx2lo.amp For the background to the scandal, and a timeline of events, see links, below. It should not be forgotten that (a) LBWF was involved at every stage of the scandal, but kept its deliberations and interventions for the most part away from public scrutiny. Thus, to give a flavour, in the crucial period 2017 to 2021, the relevant scrutiny committee minutes make no mention of Whitefield School at all, and nor is the scandal referenced in the annual reports of the Waltham Forest Safeguarding Children Board. (b) At the time o... »

More on LBWF’s failure to keep tenants in its low-rise and high-rise housing blocks safe from fire

November 25, 2024 fire safety 0

A few weeks ago, and in response to a Freedom of Information Act question, LBWF released further data about the remediation programme it is running to address the fire safety defects which exist in all but one of its 63 low-rise and high-rise housing blocks. Unsurprisingly, given that this programme started in 2020, the data shows that in the years that have elapsed there has been some tangible progress. But what’s striking is how much more needs to be done, even as regards the most pressing issues. To start with the headline figures, while the number of ‘high’ or ‘medium’ risk defects that are classified as ‘overdue’ has gradually fallen from a peak of 4,431 in January 2020, the comparative... »

New official data shows that seven years after Grenfell nearly all LBWF housing blocks have ‘life-critical fire-safety defects’, leaving tenants to live with the risks

November 1, 2024 fire safety 0

In 2020, after LBWF was involved in several notable fire safety scandals, including the purchase of hundreds of misleadingly labelled fire doors, the subject of a fraud inquiry, it began a programme of remedial work to bring its housing stock ‘up to the most modern…safety standard’, this being forecast to cost about £40m., with the final sum dependent on what was discovered as the work proceeded. The following year, officers updated the Audit and Governance Committee about progress in January and October, the focus being on the number of remedial actions that had been either completed or were outstanding: As can be seen, the proportion of actions which were outstanding had fallen slightly ov... »

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