Posts

Stella Creasy’s views on local government: getting better, but not yet best

June 12, 2015 MPs, Stella Creasy MP, the Labour Party in Waltham Forest

I was interested to hear Stella Creasy MP tell Andrew Neil on last week’s Sunday Politics show: ‘Do you think local government matters, Andrew, because I do. Local government is often the first place where people come into politics’. She is quite right, of course, and similar sentiments are exactly why I write this blog. But has she really lived up to her own words? There are plenty of things about Dr. Creasy to like. She is a good communicator, and has a high and generally positive profile in much of Waltham Forest. She deserves considerable credit for her campaign against loan sharks, particularly as this involved her in some totally undeserved and very unpleasant public abuse. And she is ... »

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The National Construction College’s Cathall Rd. facility UPDATE: local people still miss out

June 12, 2015 National Construction College Cathall Rd.

Courtesy of the LBWF Growth Scrutiny Committee, I now have some up-to-date figures on how many people – and in particular how many local people – have attended The National Construction College’s Cathall Rd. facility. As I pointed out in a previous post on this subject, LBWF initially promised that the College would have a dramatic impact on the locality. In December 2010, Council Leader Cllr Chris Robbins told Waltham Forest News that it was ‘“a fantastic, world-class training facility for local residents and people from across east London”’ and endorsed the view that ‘over the next four years the Construction Training Centre will provide training for more than 4000 local people’ (see WFN, ... »

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Documenting Past Failures: (11) some conclusions, part one

June 10, 2015 Past failures: overview

The previous ten posts in this series have looked at LBWF’s record of extensive failure over the past decade or so, and it is now apposite to offer some general conclusions. First, it is notable that, by and large, the cases examined share some common characteristics, which may be summarised as follows: (a) rule breaches On paper, LBWF has always possessed clear rules to govern programme inception and governance. Yet the evidence shows that these were often disregarded.  Contracts were procured without seeking the requisite number of bidders; contract documents remained unsigned, sometimes undated too; and monitoring and audit requirements, even when specified as mandatory, were not respecte... »

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‘Create the impression that you’re constantly in your constituency without wasting too much of your time by being there’

June 3, 2015 MPs, the Labour Party in Waltham Forest

According to Guido Fawkes, Labour’s Austin Mitchell has just come out with this nugget of advice for Parliamentarians: ‘“Constituents are a grudging lot and the people that turn to you for help are so clueless that they probably don’t vote anyway. It’s appearances that count, not work or surgeries.The days when you’d get away with a monthly visit – still less a yearly visit – are gone. You’ve got to live there, or pretend to… so create the impression that you’re constantly in your constituency without wasting too much of your time by being there.”’ (see http://order-order.com/#_@/MMp05VumkPS4JA)  Curiously, news reaches me simultaneously that one local MP already seems to have taken his advi... »

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Town Hall asbestos: a closer look at LBWF’s defence strategy

June 2, 2015 Town Hall asbestos

The outcome of LBWF’s appearance at Southwark Crown Court on Friday last has been well reported in the Waltham Forest Guardian, see especially here: http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/wfnews/12979957.Council_asbestos_failings_put_workers_at__serious_risk____Judge/ However, there is one detail which certainly deserves greater attention than it has so far attracted. The case against LBWF was initially heard at Westminster Magistrates Court in January 2015. On this occasion LBWF pleaded guilty on all four counts, and advanced the mitigation that: (a) it was very sorry; (b) it had spent a large amount of money putting things right; and (c) it did not merit a substantial fine, because the only... »

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