Posts

The Whitefield School child abuse scandal: an update

December 20, 2024 child safeguarding, Whitefield

On 27 November 2024, the LBWF Leader Cllr. Grace Williams released a statement on Whitefield School which included the following: ‘We have worked closely with the academy trust, Ofsted, Department for Education, and NHS to support the police investigation. Now that the criminal investigation into staff at Whitefield has concluded, safeguarding partners will commission an independent expert to carry out a Local Children Safeguarding Practice Review to ensure the lessons of this distressing case are learned’.  In passing, the timing of this statement is puzzling.  The casual reader mig... »

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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

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 ... »

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

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, Whitefield

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 r... »

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

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 ar... »

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

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 ... »

Waltham Forest’s Great and Good – from Dr. Stella Creasy MP, to senior police officers, via LBWF Leader Grace Williams – come a cropper about faith-based zealotry…yet again

October 17, 2024 Cllr. Grace Williams, faith groups, Stella Creasy MP

Over the years, senior members of the borough’s establishment on occasion have enthusiastically supported faith organisations – Christian and Muslim – which turn out to espouse unattractive values, values that no Town Hall officer or mainstream politician or police officer would express in public. A classic example occurred in 2016, when a clutch of Labour councillors, (including the now Deputy Leader of Waltham Forest Council, Cllr. Ahsan Khan) attended an event in the Town Hall to celebrate the visiting Pakistani Senator Sirajul Haq, this happy gathering captured for posterity on ... »

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LBWF CEO Linzi Roberts-Egan’s message to council staff: we are in a much more challenging financial position than we hoped we would be, so save money or else!

October 10, 2024 LBWF finance, LBWF spin, Senior staff pay

LBWF CEO Linzi Roberts-Egan has just circulated the following message to staff: ‘We are facing a significant budget deficit this year, with a £17million forecasted overspend. This is a much more challenging financial position than we hoped we would be in at this point in the year, and together we must all take immediate action to address it. This will mean making difficult decisions over the coming months and will require a step-change from us all to reduce costs and think about how every pound is spent. All teams across the Council are being asked to develop action plans to achieve addi... »

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BBC undercover investigation again highlights Waltham Forest’s appalling food hygiene standards, raising doubts about whether LBWF is carrying out its responsibility for enforcement

October 7, 2024 food hygiene, LBWF spin

It’s a well established fact that Waltham Forest has serious food hygiene problems, being home to, as of September 2024, the highest percentage of food businesses in England and Wales rated zero to two stars on the Food Standards Agency (FSA) zero to five star rating system. But today the BBC publishes the results of an undercover operation that makes the problem look even worse than so far has been imagined. Because what the BBC establishes is that, on the ground, fiddling the star system is ‘rife’. Earlier this year, it visited a number of businesses in the Leyton area, and found that no les... »

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The number of senior staff in the Town Hall keeps rising, with a 38 per cent increase between 2021 and 2023 alone, but the explanation remains a mystery

October 4, 2024 Redundancies, Senior staff pay

Recently released figures show that, between 2021 and 2023, the number of senior staff in the Town Hall increased from 317 to 437, that is by 38 per cent. This continues a trend going back to 2015 (the earliest year that is comparable): As a graphic illustration of the cohort that has been created, in 2023 the top team in the Town Hall consisted of the CEO, Linzi Roberts-Egan, her deputy, four ‘Strategic Directors’, 16 ‘Corporate Directors’, 16 ‘Directors’, and then an array of their deputies. Examining this expansion in more detail, it appears that some of it occurred because of new appointme... »