Posts

Waltham Forest’s Safer Neighbourhoods Board and MOPAC funding: the scandal continues

February 16, 2018 Gang Prevention Programme, LBWF spin, Policing/crime

A post of September past (see link below) reported that, though in FYs 2015-16 and 2016-17 the Waltham Forest Safer Neighbourhood Board (WFSNB) had been allotted £78,000 of Mayor’s Officer for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) funding, and promised to rigorously track how this was spent, it had so far failed to submit anywhere near the required number of monitoring reports. Now it has just emerged that nearly five months down the line, this regrettable situation persists, with MOPAC admitting that the WFSNB’s end of year monitoring forms for 2015-16, plus the mid-year and end of year monitoring forms for 2016-17, are all still outstanding. To put it bluntly, this is quite disgraceful. It is u... »

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LBWF and public-private partnerships: (2) North London Ltd.

February 9, 2018 North London Ltd.

LBWF’s relationship with North London Ltd. (NLL) illuminates a second way of organising public-private partnerships. NLL is a private company, formed in 2005, whose business is ‘Other service activities not elsewhere classified’. LBWF has close links with NLL, not (as with NPS London Ltd.) because of share ownership, but rather because of, first, mutual involvement in a network of allied institutions, and second, the fact that for the bulk of its history NLL has been something of a factotum, the authority’s chosen vehicle for the local implementation of a variety of programmes, some originating in Waltham Forest, others elsewhere. Thus, in the years to 2012, when LBWF paid NLL in all £... »

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Ex-Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman: the final disgrace

January 29, 2018 the Labour Party in Waltham Forest

For reasons best known to themselves, and against a mass of evidence, sections of the local Labour Party have continued to champion the disgraced ex-Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman. Now, however, their empathy looks even more absurd. For Mr. Rahman has been struck off by his own professional body, the Solicitors Disciplinary Committee (SDC), and ordered to pay £86,000 in costs. The key part of the SDC’s judgement is as withering as it is possible to get: If Labour Party people can’t get these kind of very clear-cut issues right, it is reasonable to wonder whether their judgement should be trusted on anything else. »

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LBWF and public-private partnerships: (1) NPS London Ltd.

January 26, 2018 Asbestos at St. Mary's School, Town Hall asbestos

As this blog has previously noted, LBWF is now involved in extending its public-private partnerships, and so it is timely to look at some previous examples of similar initiatives, in order to discover what lessons can be learnt. A subsequent post will return to the vexed history of North London Ltd., while what follows focuses on NPS London Ltd. (NPSL), jointly owned by LBWF and NPS Property Consultants Ltd. (a subsidiary of Norse Group Ltd., itself the child of Norfolk County Council). NPSL was formed in 2007, taking over what was previously LBWF’s in-house building consultancy service, with the staff TUPE-ed over. Subsequently, NPSL has been involved in a number of big LBWF projects, in pa... »

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The Waltham Forest Matters Annual Awards for 2017

December 29, 2017 Cllr. Alan Siggers, Cllr. Anna Mbachu, Cllr. Chris Robbins, Cllr. Clare Coghill, Cllr. Clyde Loakes, Cllr. Hather Ali, Cllr. Liaquat Ali, Mark Hynes, Martin Esom

It’s that time of year folks, and as this blog rapidly approaches the treasured 100,000 hits mark (OK, we admit it, 50,000 of them come from Cllrs Loakes and Robins) here are our awards: Picture of the year (From a couple of years back, true, but just too much of a cracker not to include) Sentence of the year ‘The company Knice Industries ltd is dormant and had never traded and that the councillor has applied to strike the company off the Companies House Register’ Mark Hynes, LBWF Director of Governance and Law, tells it like it is to a resident Social observation of this year (and every other) Dandy of the year  Cllr. Alan Siggers (keeping the Conservative link with rock music going b... »

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