Posts

Leytonstone’s E11 BID Co: still more controversy

July 23, 2018 Cllr. Clyde Loakes, E11 BID Co., Waltham Forest Business Board

Over the years, this blog has regularly reported on the travails of the E11 BID Co. Ltd. (hereafter BID ONE), a private company that was specially set up in 2007 to run Leytonstone’s Business Improvement District (BID). In some ways, that this has been merited is quite surprising. The financial and operating model that BID ONE initially set out to follow was hardly complicated. As part of the legislation that set up the BID area, LBWF was charged with collecting an annual levy (calculated as a percentage of rateable value) from local traders, and then passing it over to BID ONE. All BID ONE had to do was spend it purposefully, for instance by making the streets cleaner, safer, and in g... »

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Waltham Forest Labour : boosting the local economy…er sorry, a local economy

July 11, 2018 Waltham Forest Labour Party

Here’s something funny. Councillor Clare Coghill is a great one for saying how important it is to boost the local economy, and often reassures us that, in its never ending search to make our lives better, her council is doing just that. For example, here she is writing in the preface to LBWF’s 2016-18 Growth Strategy: ‘Over the next four years we will continue to work closely with local businesses and give them the support they need to prosper, and promote and invest in our town centres to keep wealth in the borough and give residents the quality and mix of services they expect’ [emphasis added]. So against this backdrop it comes as a bit of a surprise to find that th... »

The Labour Party in Waltham Forest and the financing of local elections: a scandal in the making? (2)

July 4, 2018 the Labour Party in Waltham Forest

A recent post, based on the evidence of a whistleblower, casts doubt on the way that the Labour Party in Waltham Forest has been financing its local government election expenditure (see link below). The key point is that in the last two local election campaigns, the bill appears to have been picked up solely by the Labour Group (LG), in other words the councillors in the Town Hall,  and this raises eyebrows for two interrelated reasons. First, there is the question of the LG’s status.The Electoral Commission (EC) oversees party political spending, and does this in part by monitoring what it calls ‘accounting units’, for example Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs), which it r... »

‘London Borough of Waltham Forest: “a property empire with a sideline in local government”’ – the movie

June 18, 2018 Redevelopment

The trailer from Limitedscope. Other Limitedscope productions can be found at vimeo.com/limitedscope   »

LBWF’s refresh of its Gang Prevention Programme: spin, spin, and more spin?

June 6, 2018 Gang Prevention Programme, Policing/crime

It is abundantly evident that many people in the borough, from many different backgrounds, are worried about the seemingly unchecked level of local gang-related crime, and the grave impact that this is having on young people’s lives. It is therefore astonishing that those who turned to LBWF’s website yesterday in order to find out what the Cabinet is intending to do about gangs found themselves greeted by the following: Certain aspects of anti-gang work – for example, active police operations – of course must be kept largely confidential. But yesterday’s discussion was about the direction of LBWF policy, and the resources to be expended, in other words the kind of things that taxpayers... »

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