From Private Eye No.1643 21 February-6 March 2025. It’s good that PE highlights the witless response of Cllr. Mitchell. In another, more honourable time, many would have expected her to resign. »
In the past couple of years, and without much public commentary, the senior management team in LBWF has been seeking to transform the prevailing culture in the Town Hall by introducing and then championing a major equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) programme. Specifically, the aim has been to ensure that: (a) ‘our workforce reflects the diversity of our community’, on the basis that this will ‘lead to stronger connections with our communities and better design of services’; (b) there is maximum ‘inclusivity’ so that ‘people feel safe to bring their authentic selves to work’; (c) the work environment allows ‘everyone…to access good quality and suitable opportunities for... »
The tragic death of Tracey Turnell has been much covered in the media, and last week Senior East London Coroner Graeme Irving held an inquest to review the surrounding circumstances, which the Investigations Reporter of the East London and West Essex Guardian Series, Charles Thompson, diligently covered here https://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/24904405.tracey-turnell-death-coroner-suggests-waltham-forest-discipline-staff/ and this is the source for much of the following. At the outset, Mr. Irvine called Ms. Turnell’s death ‘“horrifying”, and added ‘“It is a truly, truly appalling case”’. But he also concluded that there had been ‘“significant missed opportunities”’ to ‘“safeguard thi... »
In a recent ruling, the Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS) finds in favour of long-term local council tenant Michelle Edwards over the way that LBWF has handled a series of complaints that she submitted in 2022 and 2023 (the most serious about Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB)) and concludes that that there have been four clear instances of LBWF ‘maladministration’. Some of the details are eye catching. For example, the HOS reports that when Ms. Edwards submitted one of her ASB complaints, LBWF not only failed to log it properly, but then broke the deadlines stipulated by its own complaints procedure at both stage one and stage two, in the end providing a final response only after an extraordinary te... »
As previous posts have noted (see links below), LBWF’s remediation programme (RP) to make its 42 low-rise and 21 high-rise housing blocks fully fire safe still has much work to do. The RP was launched in 2020, with £40m. earmarked as support, but at the beginning of 2025, there remain nearly 2,000 high and medium risk issues in the blocks which need addressing, and many of these concern fundamentals, ‘Door Repairs/Renewal’, ‘Fire Alarm System’, ‘Smoke/Fire Detection’, ‘Fire Signage’, and so on. Now it can be revealed that part of the explanation for the RP’s lack of progress stems from the fact that, as work has proceeded, asbestos has been found in 13 of the high-rise blocks being upgraded,... »