Corporate Audit and Anti-Fraud Team – Waltham Forest Matters

Documenting Past Failures: (5) The BNI – ‘We’re awfully sorry, folks. Mistakes were made about how we spent millions of pounds of public money. But it’s all in the past. Let’s move forward and forget it’.

Nick Tiratsoo March 6, 2015 The BNI

By the spring of 2008, the situation with the Better Neighbourhoods Initiative (BNI) programme was becoming untenable. The Council’s Corporate Audit and Anti-Fraud Team had just reported on the Dr. Foster episode, had nearly completed its work on EduAction’s Youth at Risk project, and was chasing new leads. A consultant’s examination of the BNI which was presented to Cabinet concluded there had been ‘systematic failures by officers to follow sound procedures’. Police investigations were said to be ongoing. Negative coverage in the local press continued. So LBWF reacted as it had always done, ... »

BNI, Corporate Audit and Anti-Fraud Team, Dr. Foster, EduAction, LBWF, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Waltham Forest Council, Waltham Forest Guardian

Documenting Past Failures: (4) NRF, EduAction, and the Youth At Risk programme

Nick Tiratsoo February 10, 2015 EduAction, NRF, Youth at Risk

Between 2003 and 2006, LBWF paid EduAction £340,000 for a programme called ‘Youth at Risk’, the objective of which was to reduce exclusions from schools in targeted areas, broadly the poorer parts of the borough. From 2006 onwards, rumours about this programme began to spread, with the central allegation being that EduAction had not spent the money as intended. Various investigations ensued, and a complaint was made to the police. The issue rumbled on, receiving extensive coverage in the Waltham Forest Guardian (see links below). Finally, in 2010, thanks to the persistence of several campaigne... »

Corporate Audit and Anti-Fraud Team, EduAction, Iain Duncan Smith, NRF, NRF Youth at Risk, past failures, Waltham Forest Guardian

Documenting Past Failures: (3) NRF, EduAction and an open letter to Cllr. Chris Robbins

Nick Tiratsoo February 10, 2015 Cllr. Chris Robbins, EduAction, NRF

One of the outside organisations that LBWF paid NRF monies to was EduAction, or more properly EduAction Waltham Forest Ltd., a joint venture formed by Amey Plc (‘one of today’s leading public services providers’) and Nord Anglia Education. In the 2000s, EduAction ran the schools in the borough, after a damning Ofsted report at the turn of the century had disposed of the idea that the local authority was up to the job. It was always said that EduAction was receiving NRF monies to help it run special programmes, aimed for instance those at those most at risk of failure or truancy. Ho... »

BNI, Chris Robbins, contracts, Corporate Audit and Anti-Fraud Team, Dr. Foster, EduAction, LBWF, NRF, past failures, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Roger Taylor, Waltham Forest Council