Martin Esom

LBWF and the anti-terrorist Prevent programme: is it wise to keep it in the closet?

July 28, 2015 LBWF spin, Martin Esom, Past failures: overview, Prevent

In early June of this year, I asked LBWF under the Freedom of Information Act for a list of its current Prevent contracts, with for each its start and finish dates, the name of the contractor, the value of the contract, and a brief description of what the contract aims to achieve. A few days ago, my request was refused, with LBWF arguing as follows: ‘Waltham Forest Council recognises the public interest in transparency and openness in local government; and in the context of this Freedom of Information request, such openness would increase public understanding and inform public debate about the... »

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Documenting Past Failures: (11) some conclusions, part one

June 10, 2015 Past failures: overview

The previous ten posts in this series have looked at LBWF’s record of extensive failure over the past decade or so, and it is now apposite to offer some general conclusions. First, it is notable that, by and large, the cases examined share some common characteristics, which may be summarised as follows: (a) rule breaches On paper, LBWF has always possessed clear rules to govern programme inception and governance. Yet the evidence shows that these were often disregarded.  Contracts were procured without seeking the requisite number of bidders; contract documents remained unsigned, sometimes und... »

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LBWF and the Town Hall asbestos scandal: new evidence emerges

May 27, 2015 Town Hall asbestos

LBWF is due in Southwark Crown Court on Friday 29 May for sentencing over its conviction for breaking health and safety legislation in relation to asbestos in the Town Hall. In the subsequent fall-out, further questions no doubt will be asked about how LBWF interacted with NPS London Ltd, since in formal terms the latter was a key player in the authority’s Asbestos Policy (for which see the ‘documents’ tab). It is already established that (a) policy or no policy, there was a good deal of confusion about the asbestos in the Town Hall, the dates when reports were received, who exactl... »

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Town Hall asbestos: LBWF comments, at last: UPDATED

March 30, 2015 Town Hall asbestos

Stop press: Mr Fenwick provides a full reply to our e-mail of 20 March 2015.   26 March 2015 ‘Dear Mr Tiratsoo, Thank you for your email. Its contents are noted. The Council has provided a response to your original queries and explained the relationship between NPS(London) Ltd and the Council. Daniel Fenwick Director of Governance’   20 March 2015 ‘Dear Mr. Fenwick, Thank you for your e-mail. Most of it of course is entirely irrelevant to the points that we raised with Mr. Esom on 27 January 2015, points he has subsequently been so reticent about responding to. As t... »

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Town Hall asbestos: LBWF comments, at last

March 23, 2015 Town Hall asbestos

On 27 January 2015, Trevor Calver and I called for LBWF Chief Executive Martin Esom to resign over the Town Hall asbestos affair. Here is the correspondence that followed in date order, beginning at the bottom with our initial e-mail.   20 March 2015 ‘Dear Mr. Fenwick, Thank you for your e-mail. Most of it of course is entirely irrelevant to the points that we raised with Mr. Esom on 27 January 2015, points he has subsequently been so reticent about responding to. As to the parts that are relevant, our response is as follows. First, your contention that there was a ‘discovery’ of as... »

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LBWF Chief Executive Martin Esom and asbestos: the silence continues

February 27, 2015 Town Hall asbestos

Exactly one month ago, Trevor Calver and I wrote LBWF Chief Executive Martin Esom the following e-mail:   Dear Mr. Esom, In November 2012, we wrote to you about the potential conflict of interest inherent in concurrently you being chief executive of LBWF and board member of NPS London Ltd.. You told us that you understood the risks, and had taken steps to mitigate them, explaining: ‘I fully recognise my role as board director, and also Chief Executive of the authority and ensure that the two roles are not blurred. My deputy, Shifa Mustafa, acts as the lead client and she has a free reign ... »

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Disposing of Council assets: the Waltham Forest Business Board and the Argall car parks

February 16, 2015 Argall Car Parks, Waltham Forest Business Board

Councils inevitably dispose of unwanted public assets from time to time, and it is always interesting to discover exactly how they do so, and who benefits. The following is a tale of what happens in Waltham Forest, and as might be predicted, it  provokes more questions than it answers.  On 14 June 2011, the LBWF Cabinet agreed to lease the Argall Avenue car parks to ‘BID’, a fair assumption being that the latter was the Argall Business Improvement District Co., which operated on the modest industrial estate of the same name (see the Cabinet paper of that date, Appendix B, p.1). The car parks b... »

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LBWF, the Local Authority Business Growth Initiative programmes, and the Waltham Forest Business Board, E11 Bid Co., and North London Ltd.

February 13, 2015 Argall Car Parks, E11 BID Co., North London Ltd., Waltham Forest Business Board

A couple of years ago, I started hearing some very surprising things about Leytonstone’s Business Improvement District (BID) company, the E11 Bid Co.. The allegation, in short, was that the directors of the company had failed to keep proper books and neglected to pay their taxes; run up substantial debts; and as a consequence jeopardised the company’s ‘going concern’ status. I had always been suspicious about the E11 BID Co. because there was a lack of transparency about its operations, and a lot of obvious flannel about its alleged successes. I knew that councillors (i... »

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LBWF Chief Executive Martin Esom’s (non-) attendance at Cabinet

February 13, 2015 Martin Esom

Back in September 2014, Waltham Forest’s Chief Executive, Martin Esom, was awarded a very large pay increase, amounting to £15,000 or 8.7 per cent, and this took his salary to £195,000 p.a.. With some justification, the Waltham Forest Guardian reported the story under the headline ‘Inflation busting pay rise for town hall boss’. Given his level of remuneration, one might expect that Mr. Esom would be a fixture at Cabinet, as this is, of course, supposedly the Council’s highest decision-making body.  But looking at the Council’s website, I find that Mr. Esom last attended Cabinet on 15 July 201... »

Asbestos matters: the Waltham Forest Town Hall fiasco

February 2, 2015 Town Hall asbestos

The Council’s recent conviction over the asbestos dust that it allowed to pollute the Town Hall has been well covered in the local press, see for example: http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/11734109.Council_admits_failing_to_protect_staff_from_deadly_asbestos/  http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/11746274.Confusion_over_town_hall_asbestos_scandal_as_contractor_denies_involvement/  http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/11737085.Council_employee_exposed_to_asbestos_dust__will_worry_his_entire_life_/ http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/11734195.Campaigners_call_for_individuals_to_be_held_t... »

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