Documenting Past Failures: (8) the self-defeating silence of Councillor Marie Pye
Shortly after the Independent Panel report, I attended a Community Council meeting, and heard Cllr. Marie Pye vociferously denying any responsibility for the NRF/BNI fiasco.
So I wrote her an open letter explaining why I thought she was wrong.
Needless to say, in true Waltham Forest style, she never replied.
However, to some extent the last laugh is on her, because if you Google ‘Cllr. Marie Pye’ today, amusingly, my letter comes up as entry four.
Anyway, here is the letter in full, as I believe still that it makes a perfectly valid point.
22 January 2010
Dear Councillor Pye
The NRF-BNI fiasco
I was surprised to hear that, after the Community Council on Monday night, you told one of my colleagues that you bore no responsibility for the NRF-BNI fiasco, and added that anybody who suggested otherwise was a ‘conspirisist’.
Let me remind you of some facts, based upon the relevant documentation.
Your portfolio
You took your place in the Cabinet during mid-2006, holding the portfolio for communities and housing. At about the same time, the BNI was coalescing, and there was some discussion as to who would be the Cabinet member responsible. This was rapidly and conclusively concluded, as the minutes of the Better Neighbourhoods Project Board demonstrate:
Meeting on 30/05/06
‘JW [Jan Wickham, Deputy Chief Executive] advised that Neighbourhoods came within Cllr Marie Pye’s portfolio of Communities and Housing, with Cllr Terry Wheeler’s portfolio of Investment and Enterprise covering Regeneration’.
Meeting on 12/06/06
‘Page 1, item 5 – Member engagement – there’s still a need for political clarity regarding present confusion on Portfolio responsibilities. Agreed that the Chair will speak to Cllr Pye asking her to clarify responsibilities amongst the other relevant Portfolio Leads…Noted that the Leader wishes to be informed rather than involved. Cllr Pye is currently concentrating on Housing but is aware of her BNI responsibilities’.
Meeting on 24/07/06
‘Page 1, item 2 – discussion with Cllr Pye – CM [Colin Moon, Head of Housing] advised he’d had a meeting recently with Cllr Pye; all BNI issues regarding other Members should be channelled through her.
Page 1, item 2 – meeting with the Leader – CM advised he’d spoken with the Leader who has confirmed he’s happy for all BNI issues to be referred to Cllr Pye’.
Thereafter, right up to the present, your Cabinet portfolio has remained unchanged in this respect, as the Council’s constitution makes clear – see Table 3 at www.walthamforest.gov.uk/index/ council/ about/lbwf-constitution.htm.
Your actions in relation to the BNI
Many of your actions in relation to the BNI are well documented. Two stand out. First, in late 2006 and early 2007, you were heavily engaged with Councillor Loakes in determining how to address a serious under-spend crisis, in order to avoid the ignominy of clawback, and this bore fruit in the shape of the BNI ‘community cohesion’ projects – an entirely new departure for the programme as a it stood. Second, in January 2008, you appeared in the pages of the Waltham Forest Guardian defending your decision to ‘withdraw’ Peter Musgrave’s mildly critical report on BNI operations in Wood Street and Hoe Street – a decision that the newspaper itself considered was ‘offensive’, ‘short-sighted’ and ‘[lacking in] any hint of humility’.
The BNI programme 2006-08
In 2006-08, the BNI spent c. £7m on over 100 different projects. When PricewaterhouseCoopers later surveyed these for LBWF, it found that
in about a third of cases, no project file could be found;
in all but three cases, procurement had been contrary to LBWF rules;
in over half the cases, there was no signed contract in evidence;
and in the overwhelming majority of cases there had been no audit.
The BNI community cohesion projects were particularly disastrous. None were procured according to the rules, monitored, or audited. A good proportion were clearly questionable, for example, the £66,011 that was paid to a man on the Isle of Wight, which the Council later claimed was a misprint, and the £24-26,000 spent on a one day conference for perhaps 50 local teachers, fair enough if the venue had been in the Seychelles, but puzzling to say the least given that it was in fact at Leyton Orient.
It should also be noted that when, after the intervention of MPs Harry Cohen and Iain Duncan Smith, knowledge of this ‘mess’ finally became public, you and your Cabinet colleagues commissioned a series of expensive inquiries by outside consultants which were subsequently revealed to be flawed, indeed so inadequate that when the current Chief Executive reviewed them, he felt it appropriate to appoint the Independent Panel.
In conclusion
Any fair minded person who is familiar with the evidence knows that many people bear some degree of culpability for the NRF-BNI fiasco. As regards yourself, the record is clear. You held the relevant Cabinet portfolio, and have to accept ultimate responsibility. To suggest otherwise is simply inconsistent with the facts.
Yours,
Nick Tiratsoo
Truth & Lies - July 18, 2015, 1:51 pm
The entirely unsubstantiated scuttlebut on this is that Cllr Loakes just went around Cllr Pye and that she was genuinely kept in the dark about the dodgy misuse of BNI/NRF funds because it was felt that she was too honest and straight to accept Loakes’ machinations with that money and might demand that it was actually sapent on what it was supposed to be for.