Cllr. Keith Rayner

Some councillors seem to have been put on earth purely to entertain us. But are they having the last laugh?

In a recent Waltham Forest Echo story, Local Democracy Reporter Josh Mellor reports that one of Waltham Forest’s finest, Cllr. Alistair Strathern, is standing for Labour in the eagerly awaited Mid Bedfordshire bye-election, and while a bit hazy about local issues, believes he is an upgrade on the Tory incumbent, Nadine Dorries, because she has been a ‘“part-time M.P”’, presumably a ... »

Cllr. Keith Rayner at it again UPDATED

Cllr. Emma Best has posted on Twitter a piece of film recording an exchange with the puffed up Cllr. Keith Rayner at last night’s Council meeting. In it he refers to her as ‘dear’, to the amusement of his Labour colleagues: The full clip can be viewed here: https://twitter.com/emmabest22/status/1233142633947639808  Cllr. Rayner, it will be remembered, in recent years has had cons... »

Councillor Keith Rayner revealed to have had some difficulty with, ahem, his own council tax payments

A valuable investigation by Lewis Berrill, Chief Reporter of the East London and West Essex Guardian, has revealed that in the past few years four LBWF councillors – Rajar Anwar, Kastriot Berberi, Jemma Hemsted, and Keith Rayner – have been issued with notices for late payment of council tax, with Messrs Anwar and Rayner also then each receiving a court summons, see https://www.guardian-series.co.... »

LBWF and fire hazards in its housing stock: residents in Cann Hall’s John Walsh and Fred Wigg towers left in danger, as Labour averts its eyes

John Walsh and Fred Wigg tower blocks in Cann Hall are 15 storey identical twins, built in the 1960s, and each containing 117 flats. It would be nice to state definitively how many people have lived there at any one time over the past decade, but nobody really seems to know, with (surprisingly) official estimates ranging from 230-ish to 700. In 2011, Fred Wigg residents suffered a terrible fire, w... »

The £40,000 Cann Hall side-wall ‘artwork’ is cancelled, artists Mathew Raw and Abigail Holsborough depart the scene, and LBWF scrambles for excuses – its a big victory for local residents

As the linked posts (below) describe in some detail, for the past few months, and as part of its Making Places programme, LBWF has been intent on putting an ‘artwork’ made of tiles and costing an extraordinary £40,000, on the dilapidated side-wall of a private property in Cann Hall Rd. – a private property that coincidentally happens to be owned by a prominent family of Labour supporte... »

‘Public realm and shop front improvements’ in South Leytonstone: dogs get their dinner, while the area’s real problems are forgotten

Recent posts have looked at LBWF’s plan to spend £40,000 turning the wall of a private property on Cann Hall Rd. into an alleged ‘artwork’, and the subsequent massive backlash. But as documents released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal, this is by no means the only extraordinary waste of public money that LBWF is foisting on the same area, broadly South Leytonstone’s Cann Hall and Catha... »

LBWF’s Making Places programme and the Cann Hall side-wall fiasco: good news and bad

As a previous post has described in detail, LBWF currently plans to spend a dizzying £40,000 on tiling the large side-wall of a private commercial property in Cann Hall ward, all in the name of producing a ‘joyous’ and ‘popular’ piece of public art, Matthew Raw and Abigail Holsborough’s Embedded Bread. The good news is that because of widespread local disquiet (and in parti... »

LBWF’s Making Places programme and the strange case of the Cann Hall side-wall: four residents speak and £40,000 of public money goes west UPDATED

In the summer of 2017, LBWF put out an open call to architects, artists, designers, and landscape artists, inviting them to take part in a programme called Making Places, which it was funding from its own resources to the tune of no less than £1m.. The objective was to commission ‘community arts’ projects for ‘unloved spaces’ in each of the borough’s 20 wards, thus generate ‘places which are brigh... »

Redeveloping Waltham Forest: some experiences from the periphery

As a previous post indicates, LBWF is currently engaged in a major public-private programme to redevelop the borough. Much of the publicity about this programme centres on a few key hubs, principally Walthamstow. Far less is known about what’s happening elsewhere. So to rectify this situation, the following paragraphs focus on an unsung ward, Cann Hall, in the borough’s poorer south. First, some b... »

LBWF in Private Eye, again, this time over Fred Wigg and John Walsh Towers

To no-one’s real surprise, the current edition of Private Eye once again features LBWF, with a fairly long piece tracing the Fred Wigg and John Walsh Towers’ fiasco (see below, from No.1403, 16 October to 29 October 2015), also covered in previous posts here.  This is further embarrassment for local councillor and Liberal turncoat Keith Rayner, who despite claiming to have lived in one... »