Waltham Forest Council

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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Asbestos matters: John Cryer MP keeps stum, too

February 20, 2015 John Cryer MP, Town Hall asbestos

John Cryer is a trade union sponsored MP who likes to present himself as a staunch defender of the downtrodden. In April 2014, Mr. Cryer addressed a memorial service in the Town Hall complex to commemorate ‘men killed whilst at work’, in particular those  ‘as young as 16 who have died in and around the borough’. The local press published a picture of him standing outside the Town Hall itself, alongside trade unionists and bereaved family members. Nine months elapse, and LBWF is found guilty of exposing staff and visitors to dangerous asbestos dust in the very same building that Mr. Cryer had e... »

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Flying the flag in the face of austerity

February 16, 2015 Cllr. Chris Robbins

A local resident writes: ‘Have you noticed all the Union Jacks now flying in the borough? You might expect a Union Jack at the Town Hall, but do we need them at Leyton Cricket Ground and other such facilities? Alongside running the Council, with all the difficult decisions to be made over cuts to essential services, it would appear that money has been found to put a flagpole and union jack at all our sports grounds and council buildings, even to the extent of getting planning permission where required for listed buildings. Emails from the Council Leader’s office asking “Pleas... »

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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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Asbestos matters: Waltham Forest Council, PR, and keeping stum

February 11, 2015 LBWF spin, Town Hall asbestos

So you are an employer who has just been found guilty of breaking the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2006 – of running your affairs, in other words, in such a way as to endanger your employees and those who visit your premises. What do you do? Publicly apologise? Offer everyone involved some advice and support? Perhaps even take action against those who directly presided over the negligence? Most of us would expect (and do) all of these things. Yet after the recent court case, which has left LBWF in exactly the position I’m talking about, the o... »

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

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... »

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Documenting Past Failures: (2) NRF and Dr. Foster

February 10, 2015 Dr. Foster, NRF, The BNI

The Dr. Foster episode is one that always will be close to my heart, not only because it demonstrated everything that was wrong about the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund (NRF)/Better Neighbourhoods Initiative (BNI) programme, but also because it had a surprising kick in the tail, and one that was highly gratifying to me. The story is as follows – and I apologise for the minutiae, but as will become clear, they are necessary to expose the scale of the duplicity that occurred. In late 2006, LBWF’s Local Strategic Partnership (LSP), chair Cllr. Clyde Loakes, paid Dr Foster Intelligence (DFI) £47,150 f... »

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Documenting Past Failures: (1) Introduction

February 4, 2015 Cllr. Clyde Loakes, NRF, Past failures: overview, The BNI

Over the coming months, and at irregular intervals, I’ll be posting Documenting Past Failures pieces, which will look at some of the episodes that I’ve been involved in since 2004, broadly in chronological sequence. To start with, I’ll be looking mostly at how LBWF used Neighbourhood Renewal Fund monies. The background is as follows. In 2001, the government launched a new National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal which aimed to reverse long-term decline in wards defined as ‘deprived’ by tackling key issues (such as poor health, worklessness, and crime), and at the same time... »

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Asbestos matters again: St. Mary’s School, Walthamstow

February 2, 2015 Asbestos at St. Mary's School

A quick visit to the Health and Safety Executive’s website reveals that LBWF has form on asbestos – see here: http://www.hse.gov.uk/notices/breach/breach_list.asp?PN=1&ST=B&SN=F&EO=%3D&SF=RID&SV=1257558&SO=ANBID Some of the episodes have attracted significant comment, too, for example here: http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/wfnews/8331074.WALTHAM_FOREST__Union_slams_council_over_safety_rap/ More recently, NPS London Ltd (NPSL) and LBWF have commissioned their own investigations into events at St. Mary’s School, Walthamstow, and these merit some scrutiny. What has em... »

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Some background: a short history of local scandals

February 2, 2015 Past failures: overview

Here’s an article that I contributed to the Dec14/Jan15 issue of Labour Briefing (which I reproduce with the kind permission of the editors). It looks at some recent Waltham Forest history, and gives more than a clue as to why this blog was set up. Waltham Forest’s missing millions ‘In 2009, spurred on by a spate of bad publicity about its flagship Neighbourhood Renewal Fund (NRF) programme, and premonitions that the Audit Commission was about to halve its star rating, London Borough of Waltham Forest (LBWF) appointed an Independent Panel, chaired by the LDA’s Sir Peter Roger... »

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