Nick Tiratsoo's Posts

The Whitefield School abuse scandal: who knew what, when, and why is there still a sense of unease?

July 8, 2024 LBWF spin 0

Whitefield is a long-established academy school in Walthamstow with c. 300 pupils aged between three and 19, many of whom have severe or complex needs and are unable to communicate verbally. Over the years, Whitefield has received plenty of plaudits, and attracted support from a range of senior politicians and public figures. However, since 2017 it has been embroiled in a scandal about a historic ... »

LBWF’s top law officer Mark Hynes blocks a question about asbestos in the Town Hall for six months, and then gets an almighty rocket from the Information Commissioner

June 26, 2024 Freedom of Information Act, Mark Hynes, Town Hall asbestos 0

During the early 2020s, I spent a good deal of time researching LBWF health and safety matters, especially those which followed on from its 2015 court conviction for exposing staff and contractors to deadly asbestos dust in the Town Hall basement. Amongst other things, I discovered a worrying incident that had occurred in 2020. In early January of that year, contractors were drilling in the Town H... »

LBWF Monitoring Officer Mark Hynes rules that Cllr. Akram’s register of interests form is up-to-date and correct, and issues in the past were the fault of council staff

June 5, 2024 Mark Hynes, register of interests 0

After investigating, LBWF Monitoring Officer Mark Hynes has ruled that Cllr. Akram’s register of interest form is up-to-date and correct, and issues in the past were caused because despite Cllr. Akram submitting an e-mail requesting that his form be updated, ‘due to a fault on the part of the democratic services team the Register was not properly updated’. A fuller examination of... »

LBWF censured by an Ombudsman again, this time because it sent an invoice demanding £6,000 to a vulnerable resident…though when challenged admitted this was an ‘error’

May 10, 2024 Housing, Ombudsman 0

Hardly a week goes by without someone from LBWF repeating the twin mantras that ‘Residents are at the heart of everything we do’, and ‘We are determined to be a Council that listens to and works for everyone’. Regrettably, hardly a week goes by, either, without evidence emerging that, especially for anyone who is disadvantaged, these mantras are at best an aspiration for the future, at worst ... »

A new study shows that the closure of police stations in Waltham Forest likely was a false economy, and may have actually aggravated criminality

May 2, 2024 Policing/crime 0

From 2011 onwards, Waltham Forest saw police stations in Leyton, Leytonstone, and Walthamstow close, leaving only Chingford open. There was much disquiet about this at the time, but senior police officers and their allies assured residents that money would be saved without any discernible impact on policing or criminality. Now a paper by Dr. Elisa Facchetti of the Institute of Fiscal Studies sugge... »

Leytonstone cartoonist Woox on Michael Gove’s letter to LBWF about it’s severe maladministration of residents’ housing complaints

April 15, 2024 Housing, Woox 0

Item: ‘Secretary of State Michael Gove has written to the LBWF Chief Executive following a Housing Ombudsman report that finds LBWF guilty of severe maladministration in dealing with residents’ complaints’.  https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/660d22dcfb0f77001aec66f2/220324_-_letter_from_SoS_to_Waltham_Forest.pdf (Reproduced by kind permission of Woox) »

LBWF’s latest employment tribunal case: allegations of serious Town Hall racism dismissed, but a sour taste lingers

April 10, 2024 LBWF spin, Racism 0

On 28 March 2024, The Times published the following story: ‘No leading lady worth that label in the golden age of Hollywood would have balked at being called “glamorous”. But Joan Crawford and Rita Hayworth were not slaving away in modern local authority offices, where, according to an employment tribunal judge, the term is “undermining” and “belittling”. The judge, Sophie Park, said tha... »

‘Affordable housing’ in Waltham Forest: Labour councillors talk up their alleged achievements, but the data on completions is still dismal

March 18, 2024 Housing, LBWF spin

(cartoon courtesy of WOOX) It’s been widely reported that some Labour councillors are bragging about a supposed breakthrough in the local provision of ‘affordable housing’. Politicians habitually will trim to their advantage, obviously, but in truth this new claim is incomplete without careful contextualisation, as a glance at the data demonstrates. To start with, it is important to underline that... »

LBWF’s new core strategy, ‘Mission Waltham Forest: our plan for a more equal borough’: laudable response to austerity, or cynical political opportunism?

March 8, 2024 LBWF spin

 At its February meeting, the Council approved ‘Mission Waltham Forest: our plan for a more equal borough’ (hereafter MWF), comprising a new ‘strategic ambition’ and ‘core purpose’, which is to make Waltham Forest a more equal borough by 2030, plus a new and ‘radical’ way of working, very much ‘a break from… business-as-usual’. In detail, MWF will focus council effort and resources on ten dif... »

LBWF is making 150 employees redundant, and imposing 105 separate spending cuts, but its long-term habit of appointing expensive senior staff apparently continues

February 23, 2024 Linzi Roberts-Egan, Redundancies, Senior staff pay

Some of the choices that LBWF makes about the expenditure of public money are perplexing, to say the least. Consider first some recent history. Over the years, and when speaking publicly, leading Labour councillors have repeatedly insisted that dwindling central government funding is threatening the council’s financial stability. Yet behind the scenes, as this blog has revealed, these same leading... »

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