Leytonstone cartoonist Woox on LBWF and the Freedom of Information Act
(Reproduced by kind permission of Woox) »
Nick Tiratsoo's Posts
Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request about the Walthamstow Mall, LBWF is caught out misusing one of the legislation’s exemption clauses, and has to eat crow
The LBWF e-mail pasted below is largely self-explanatory. However, the back story is less certain. Are LBWF officers really ignorant of the Freedom of Information Act’s Section 41? Or was this an attempt to pull the wool – to brandish apparent expertise, and bank on it not being cross-checked? Whatever the case, those involved emerge with little credit. In the recent past, because of I... »
The Health and Safety Executive censures one of LBWF’s contractors after finding a worker cleaning up dangerous dust from the Town Hall basement…with a broom
As might be predicted, knowing the revelations of the past, the more that emerges about LBWF’s recent attempts to deal with dangerous asbestos in the Town Hall, the dodgier the local authority looks. Consider the following. On 13 January 2020, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) informed LBWF that a complaint had been made about construction work in the Town Hall basement, which it summarised th... »
Michelle Edwards launches a Twitter feed about her experiences in one of LBWF’s new low-rise blocks where, as she describes, ‘It has, and continues to be, hell’
Michelle Edwards is a respected local journalist who in the past campaigned on transparency and accountability, while at the same time writing a regular column for the Waltham Forest Echo about what it was like to live through her estate’s regeneration. More recently, Ms. Edwards has started writing a Twitter feed – https://twitter.com/NewBuildHell – about her move into a new... »
Crime up, police sanction detections down, yet the LBWF Safer Neighbourhoods Board hasn’t met since November 2021
In the 12 months ending August 2022, crime in Waltham Forest rose 1.9 per cent, while sanction detections (charges, summonses, cautions reprimands, final warning, etc.) fell by the same amount. Turning to the most common crime in the borough, violence against the person, there were 6,710 offences in 2021-22, 2.3 per cent down on the previous year, which seems a plus, though one that is consid... »
Complaint upheld: Cllrs Eglin, Ihenachor, Imre, and Malik found not to have declared their interests, and LBWF drops links to councillors’ party political websites
A recent post (see link, below) recorded that (a) Cllrs Rhiannon Eglin, Chrystal Ihenachor, Sazimet-Palta Imre, and Zafran Malik had not declared their interests, and (b) several other councillors, including Clyde Loakes, were using their profile pages on the LBWF website to link to Twitter feeds that were blatantly partisan, in contravention of the 1986 Local Government Act’s clear instruction th... »
Is LBWF involved in covering up the danger that Town Hall asbestos has posed to its staff and contractors?
This blog is highly sceptical about conspiracy theories and allegations of cover ups. But sometimes the facts of a case are so striking that it is easy to see why even the most sober observers will judge such scepticism to be misplaced, indeed naive. Consider the following. First, the background. In 2015, the government’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) successfully prosecuted LBWF for exposing ... »
LBWF councillors’ Register of Interests sparks controversy… yet again
Over recent years, whenever anyone from outside the Town Hall examines councillors’ publicly declared interests – their jobs, landholding, membership of clubs and societies, etc. – it’s almost guaranteed that controversy will follow. Who can forget, for example, that, extraordinarily, the immediate predecessors of the present Leader, Chris Robbins and Clare Coghill, were both found to have m... »
Why is LBWF so poor at delivering ‘affordable housing’, particularly genuinely ‘affordable housing’?
A previous post (see links below) examined LBWF’s recent performance over ‘affordable housing’ (AH). It noted that though the word ‘affordable’ is vague and often used confusingly, what’s referred to as AH in fact encompasses housing let at four different rent levels, two, called Social Rent and London Affordable Rent, specifically designed so as to be genuinely in reach of the less... »
Looking back at the past, an occasional series. Part two: ‘Our Olympics – “Chariots of Ire”‘
Purely for amusement, and to compliment all the remeniscing prompted by the 2012 anniversary, here’s a post that first appeared on this blog in 2015, one of a series on ‘Our Olympics’ (see links for the others). Who can forget the sight of no less a figure than LBWF CEO Martin Esom scurrying round the borough’s public libraries to collect in as many copies of the council... »