Posts

Senior Cabinet portfolio holder Cllr. Simon Miller steps down, as local election tensions split Waltham Forest’s Labour and Conservative parties

February 10, 2022 anti-semitism, John Cryer MP, The Conservatives in Waltham Forest, the Labour Party in Waltham Forest

In recent days, Cllr. Simon Miller has announced he will not be standing at the forthcoming local elections, and this is provoking some comment, because as Cabinet portfolio holder for Economic Prosperity he has guided many of the development schemes that are transforming parts of Waltham Forest. In a parting message, as reported by Victoria Munro in the February 2022 Waltham Forest Echo, Cllr. Miller explains that he is stepping down because juggling his full-time job with his council responsibilities is ‘“in the long term unsustainable”, and he now wants to ‘“spend more time with the people I love while I still can”’. However, there is a sting in the tail, for while urging local Labou... »

, , ,

Ex-Leader Cllr. Clare Coghill’s breach of the LBWF Code of Conduct: Director of Governance and Law Mark Hynes adds further fuel to the fire

February 2, 2022 Cllr. Clare Coghill, Mark Hynes, register of interests

Leading on from previous posts about Cllr. Coghill and her breach of the LBWF Code of Conduct by not declaring in 2017 that she was on the staff of Barry Sheerman MP, Director of Governance and Law Mark Hynes has just provided some new details, small in themselves but nevertheless significant. First, he underlines that Cllr. Coghill’s error ‘was down to her and no one else’ (in other words, ruling out that she had been undone by mis-communication with an officer); and, second, he clarifies that when Cllr. Coghill updated her LBWF register of interests [hereafter LBWF register] in 2017, for some unexplained reason, she started with ‘a blank form’, rather than simply amending her existing entr... »

, ,

LBWF Leaders rattle the begging bowl, but splash £100,000 on ‘a conversation’ between seven floodlit buildings

January 25, 2022 Cllr. Clare Coghill, Cllr. Grace Williams, LBWF finance

Since the start of the pandemic, the respective Labour Leaders, first Cllr. Clare Coghill and later her successor, Cllr. Grace Williams, have returned to versions of the long-standing Labour complaint that LBWF is not getting a fair funding deal from the Tory government. Cllr. Coghill early on set the tone, stating in a press release of April 2020 that “‘If lockdown measures continue for 12 weeks the full impact on our finances could be up to £40 million, roughly 10 per cent of our planned budget for this year’, and then telling the Waltham Forest Echo that while ministers had initially encouraged all local authorities to spend as was necessary, and promised to pick up the tab, s... »

, ,

Cllr. Clare Coghill confirmed to have broken LBWF’s Code of Conduct by not declaring her work for Barry Sheerman MP, but Director of Governance and Law Mark Hynes declines disciplinary action

January 11, 2022 Cllr. Clare Coghill, Mark Hynes, register of interests

A recent post (see first link below) looked at ex-Leader Cllr. Clare Coghill’s LBWF register of interests in the period 2014 to 2018, and noted some discrepancies.  In 2014, Cllr. Coghill declared that she was office manager for the Labour MP Barry Sheerman, but in her next register three years later, she included no such entry: The clear implication was that her job with Mr. Sheerman had ended, and, as councillors were required to record any changes to their gainful outside employment within 28 days, her update was precisely designed to record that fact. However, there was a fly in the ointment, because successive editions of the House of Commons Register of Interests of Memb... »

,

LBWF fraud team’s investigation of the FEDs fire safety scandal dodges key questions, as officers focus on their ding dong battle with Osborne at the High Court

December 23, 2021 fire hazards, fire safety, Goddarts House, Northwood Tower

In response to a Freedom of Information request, LBWF has just released a redacted version of the June 2021 investigation report, authored by the internal Corporate Anti-Fraud Team (CAFT), concerning the flat entrance door (FED) scandal, much discussed previously on this blog. The ‘executive summary’ of the findings reads as follows: ‘Osborne Property Services Ltd (OPSL) were contracted by LBWF to provide 219 fire doors to the following blocks: Holmcroft House, Lime Court, Boothby Court, Northwood Tower and Goddarts House.  Originally LBWF requested…that these doors were FD30 rated (provided 30 minutes of fire protection). This is in line with Building Regulations 2010.  This order... »

, , ,
Page 24 of 88«‹2223242526›»