Nick Tiratsoo's Posts

The local Senior Coroner points the finger at LBWF as details emerge about yet another safeguarding scandal

The tragic death of Tracey Turnell has been much covered in the media, and last week Senior East London Coroner Graeme Irving held an inquest to review the surrounding circumstances, which the Investigations Reporter of the East London and West Essex Guardian Series, Charles Thompson, diligently covered here https://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/24904405.tracey-turnell-death-coroner-suggests... »

The Housing Ombudsman Service upholds local council tenant Michelle Edwards’ complaints about her lamentable treatment by LBWF, again undermining LBWF’s claim to be resident focused

In a recent ruling, the Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS) finds in favour of long-term local council tenant Michelle Edwards over the way that LBWF has handled a series of complaints that she submitted in 2022 and 2023 (the most serious about Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB)) and concludes that that there have been four clear instances of LBWF ‘maladministration’. Some of the details are eye catching. Fo... »

LBWF’s fire safety remediation programme lags as asbestos found in some of the high-rise housing blocks being upgraded

As previous posts have noted (see links below), LBWF’s remediation programme (RP) to make its 42 low-rise and 21 high-rise housing blocks fully fire safe still has much work to do. The RP was launched in 2020, with £40m. earmarked as support, but at the beginning of 2025, there remain nearly 2,000 high and medium risk issues in the blocks which need addressing, and many of these concern fundamenta... »

The Whitefield School child abuse scandal: an update

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 carr... »

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

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 Viol... »

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

From Private Eye 1638 6-19 December 2024 »

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

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 pa... »

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

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 pr... »

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

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. ... »

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

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 no... »

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