Cllr. Grace Williams

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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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... »

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

July 8, 2024 child safeguarding, LBWF spin, Whitefield

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 safeguarding issue, a scandal that has periodically re-surfaced, and today is as raw as ever. The story starts in January 2017, with an Ofsted report.  For while this was in several respects high... »

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EXCLUSIVE From 2015 to 2022 the number of senior staff in the Town Hall grew nearly fourfold, the cost of employing them did too, but service levels remained average

January 9, 2024 Cllr. Grace Williams, LBWF finance, LBWF spin, Senior staff pay

What follows looks in greater detail at an earlier post’s revelation (see links) that in the past few years, despite repeatedly complaining about government imposed cuts, LBWF in fact has spent millions more from the public purse appointing expensive senior staff.  To get a better handle on this surprising development, I have analysed the annual series which LBWF publishes about its senior staff (here defined as everyone from the chief executive, paid £217,762 p.a., through the different directors and heads, down to grade PO8, paid £50-55,000 p.a.), focusing particularly on the period 201... »

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Cllr. Williams’ statement about Remembrance Sunday: embarrassing and crass

November 10, 2023 Cllr. Grace Williams

In her weekly e-mail to residents sent out yesterday, the 9th November, LBWF Leader Cllr. Grace Williams tells us, next to a graphic of two red poppies, that ‘This weekend I, like many of you, will be remembering and honouring people who have lost their lives as a result of war’. But Remembrance Sunday isn’t about ‘those who have lost their lives as a result of war’, in other words the dead in every conflict since time began. It is much, much more specific than that. The British Legion explains: ‘Remembrance Sunday is a national opportunity to remember the service and sacrifice of all those th... »

LBWF Leaders rattle the begging bowl, but splash £100,000 on ‘a conversation’ between seven floodlit buildings

January 25, 2022 Cllr. Clare Coghill, Cllr. Grace Williams, LBWF finance

Since the start of the pandemic, the respective Labour Leaders, first Cllr. Clare Coghill and later her successor, Cllr. Grace Williams, have returned to versions of the long-standing Labour complaint that LBWF is not getting a fair funding deal from the Tory government. Cllr. Coghill early on set the tone, stating in a press release of April 2020 that “‘If lockdown measures continue for 12 weeks the full impact on our finances could be up to £40 million, roughly 10 per cent of our planned budget for this year’, and then telling the Waltham Forest Echo that while ministers had init... »

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The recent Labour Leadership contest in Waltham Forest: a tale of Grace Williams, Liaquat Ali…and Clyde Loakes

July 30, 2021 Cllr. Clyde Loakes, Cllr. Grace Williams, Cllr. Liaquat Ali

As local news outlets have reported, in the election to find a new Council Leader following Clare Coghill’s resignation, the Labour Group has plumped for Grace Williams, with Liaquat Ali a close second. The general feeling on the Labour benches is that Ms. Williams will provide short-term stability, though many also believe that after the 2022 local elections, there will be a further Leadership contest, with both of this year’s candidates very likely to stand again. Given such a scenario, it’s a good moment to put Ms. Williams and Mr. Ali under the spotlight, and try to understand who they are... »

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Has LBWF got a child safeguarding problem? Judge in recent case condemns council’s ‘overwhelming failure’, while three other cases give cause for concern

April 27, 2021 child safeguarding, Cllr. Clare Coghill, Cllr. Grace Williams

In recent weeks, Waltham Forest and London news outlets have reported the trial of a local mother and father, who stood accused of keeping their two children isolated at home for more than 14 years, thereby depriving them of schooling, access to medical care, recreation, and any kind of social life.  The outcome was that the father admitted child cruelty and neglect, and was given a community order, while charges against the mother were dropped for reasons that have not been made public. The evidence presented in court showed that several statutory agencies had performed less than satisfa... »

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