Freedom of Information Act

The Housing Ombudsman Service berates LBWF for its error-strewn response to a resident’s routine request for information

February 17, 2022 Freedom of Information Act, LBWF spin, Town hall staff and policies

Hardly a week goes by without someone from the Town Hall popping up to insist that, in everything LBWF does, it is ‘resident focused’. However, as previous posts have suggested, whether such a boast can be sustained remains debateable. In this context, a recent complaint that a LBWF tenant lodged with the Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS) is significant. The tenant had wanted to confirm that her ten... »

The Information Commissioner’s Office audit of LBWF: less a forensic examination, more a damp squib

August 10, 2021 Freedom of Information Act, Mark Hynes

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has just released the executive summary of a ‘Data protection audit report’ focusing on LBWF (ICO policy, apparently, is not to release the full version). The ICO’s overall judgement is that, as regards both the governance and accountability of data protection and the operation of the Freedom of Information Act, LBWF is achieving ‘a reasonable level of a... »

LBWF’s in-house ‘Eastern Legal Partnership’ initiative: another Waltham Forest mystery

November 20, 2020 Freedom of Information Act, Mark Hynes

Back in 2018, LBWF launched Eastern Legal Partnership (ELP), which its supremo, Director of Governance and Law Mark Hynes, introduced thus: ‘Eastern Legal Partnership (ELP) is a team of lawyers that primarily provide legal services to the London Borough of Waltham Forest. Our successes and expertise in the council’s legal matters means that we are ideally placed to help other public sector o... »

LBWF and its Freedom of Information Act failings: now the Information Commissioner’s Office directly intervenes UPDATED

July 20, 2020 Freedom of Information Act, LBWF spin, Mark Hynes

Past posts have covered LBWF’s increasingly unsatisfactory record in handling Freedom of Information (FOI) inquiries – its delays, illegitimate evasions, ignorance of the legal framework, and so on. However, at last there is some good news, because the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is to meet with LBWF Chief Executive, Martin Esom, shortly to discuss ‘the numerous [ICO] decision notices ... »

Mark Hynes, LBWF Director of Governance and Law, receives a second successive rebuke from the Information Commissioner’s Office: what’s going on?

December 16, 2019 Freedom of Information Act, Mark Hynes

As a previous post has revealed, though LBWF’s Director of Governance and Law, Mark Hynes, doubles as the council’s Data Protection Officer, his understanding of how information on individuals should be handled on occasion is completely at odds with the experts of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Some recent correspondence provides a further illustration of Mr. Hynes’ embarrassing dive... »

Rebuked by the Information Commissioner’s Office, and revealed to have misunderstood the law, LBWF sails on regardless

October 16, 2019 Freedom of Information Act, Mark Hynes

As past posts demonstrate, LBWF has a poor record when it comes to issues around transparency, regularly failing even in terms of its statutory responsibilities. A recent case reinforces the cause for concern. In April 2019, the Waltham Forest Echo journalist Michelle Edwards sent LBWF a Subject Access Request (SAR), that is, a request to see what information the local authority at that point held... »

LBWF and customer service: ‘I wouldn’t even give this council 1 star’ UPDATED

August 1, 2019 Freedom of Information Act

LBWF likes to project itself as a ‘forward-thinking’ and ‘innovative’ council, listening to the preoccupations of its residents in order to deliver ‘high-quality public services’, and thus improve everyone’s lives. But as this blog periodically points out, projected image and hard reality are often two very different things. A further depressing example of such divergence is the way that LBWF hand... »

LBWF and the Freedom of Information Act: some troubling new findings

March 6, 2019 Freedom of Information Act, LBWF spin

The Campaign for Freedom of Information has just published an overview* that examines the extent to which London local authorities are following good practice in complying with the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, and predictably LBWF does not come out of it very well. To start with, it emerges that LBWF receives an unusually high number of FOI requests: In passing, it is rather surprising to fin... »

LBWF and the Freedom of Information Act: dumb insolence reigns?

March 30, 2016 Freedom of Information Act, LBWF, Martin Esom

LBWF’s response to Freedom of Information Act inquiries has, in my experience, always been pretty hit and miss, but recently things seem to have deteriorated sharply, ostensibly due to the fact that the system has been automated. I reproduce a letter that I have sent today to LBWF Chief Executive Martin Esom, as it well illustrates the kind of muddle that the innocent inquirer now can so eas... »

LBWF, Prevent, and the Freedom of Information Act: censorship in action?

August 16, 2015 Freedom of Information Act, LBWF spin, Martin Esom, Prevent

On 17th July 2015, I used the Freedom of Information Act (FIA) to ask LBWF: ‘At a recent hearing in City Hall, Martin Esom (LBWF CEO) claimed re the Prevent programme: “We try to identify output measures to see how successful we are or otherwise….Our output measures are things like referrals through to Channel and all sorts of things like that. We have quite a broad range of indi... »

Page 2 of 212