Posts

Hate crime in Waltham Forest: setting aside the scary rhetoric, is it as bad as LBWF claims?

February 13, 2023 Policing/crime

Introduction In the last few years, LBWF has regularly asserted that Waltham Forest is afflicted by ‘an unprecedented rise’ in damaging hate crime – especially, according to senior councillors, racist, Islamophobic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and transgender hate crime.  As a response, and leading on from a specially convened Citizen’s Assembly, it has put in place various high-profile awareness, intervention, and training programmes, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds. With the Town Hall’s example before it, the local police force has followed suit, employing a dedicated hate crime officer; offering ‘an anonymous email inbox…for those experiencing hate crime’; mounting patrols at ‘... »

Looking back at the past, an occasional series. Part three: Private Eye reports on LBWF’s feeble attempts to curb Islamist extremism

February 7, 2023 Prevent

From Private Eye No.1407, 11/12-18/12/15 As a previous post noted: ‘Perhaps curiously, given LBWF’s decidedly chequered record in identifying and addressing Islamist extremism, Martin Esom, the council CEO, chaired the pan London Prevent Board…from 2012 to late 2018’. »

After 64 working days, LBWF Director of Governance and Law, Mark Hynes, is still to complete his asbestos inquiry, ratcheting up public unease

January 31, 2023 Town Hall asbestos

In an e-mail of 30 January 2023, LBWF Director of Governance and Law Mark Hynes writes: ‘Although I was hoping to have concluded my review into the concerns you raised about asbestos management compliance, the matter is still ongoing. I hope to have concluded matters in the near future and will write to you again at that time’. I first contacted Mr. Hynes about whether LBWF had respected the asbestos legislation on 1 September 2022. He made no substantive response for eight weeks, and then on 27 October 2022 suddenly announced an inquiry. Now, some 64 working days later, and despite the no doubt costly assistance of ‘global law firm’ Clyde & Co. LLP, there’s still no outcome.... »

Local journalist Michelle Edwards reveals pressing fire safety issues at a newly built LBWF housing block, but from the Town Hall there is only silence

January 19, 2023 fire hazards, fire safety

The respected Waltham Forest journalist Michelle Edwards has recently moved to a flat in a low-rise block at Pinder Road, Wood Street, completed by Countryside Partnerships in early 2022 and now owned and run by LBWF. It is true to say that this has not been a happy experience, and she tweets about the issues she has encountered at https://twitter.com/NewBuildHell.  Some of these issues are particularly worrying. At home one day in November 2022, Ms. Edwards heard a commotion at the front of her block, and went to investigate. She found that the lock on the main entry door had failed, residents were unable to get in or out, and the Fire Brigade was at work rectifying matters. This got her th... »

,

Has LBWF Director of Governance and Law Mark Hynes’ Town Hall asbestos inquiry gone seriously awry?

January 10, 2023 Town Hall asbestos

As previously reported, following my request that LBWF examines whether it may have recently contravened the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, Director of Governance and Law Mark Hynes is embarked upon an internal investigation, involving ‘a number of officers, former employees of the Council and other third parties’, ‘covering a significant period of time since 2013’, and taking ‘a number of months to complete’, with Clyde & Co. LLP contracted to ‘support’ him. At first sight, this seems to be positive news, proof that, as Mr. Hynes initially told me, ‘the Council takes the matters you have raised…very seriously’. Yet as time has passed, doubts about what is going on have ... »

Page 16 of 88«‹1415161718›»