From Private Eye No. 1630, 16 to 29 August 2024 PS Its good to see Mr. Hynes fingered by PE, as, by his absurd antics (see links below), he wasted a good deal of public money, which costs us all. Readers may be interested to know that when I recently asked LBWF CEO Linzi Roberts-Egan what she intended to do about the ICO’s demolition of Mr. Hynes, the fact that, though a solicitor, Mr. Hynes... »
During the early 2020s, I spent a good deal of time researching LBWF health and safety matters, especially those which followed on from its 2015 court conviction for exposing staff and contractors to deadly asbestos dust in the Town Hall basement. Amongst other things, I discovered a worrying incident that had occurred in 2020. In early January of that year, contractors were drilling in the Town H... »
In September 2022, I asked the council’s Director of Governance and Law, Mark Hynes, to confirm that, in the period 2015-20, LBWF had managed asbestos in the Town Hall as required by the key piece of legislation, the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 (hereafter CAR 2012). I was particularly concerned about the Town Hall basement, where asbestos was known to be most prevalent, and wanted to esta... »
At the council meeting last week, departing CEO Martin Esom was granted the freedom of the borough. At first sight, many will conclude that he deserves such recognition, having guided the council for nearly thirteen years, albeit paid handsomely for his efforts, c. £200,000 every year, c. £2.6m in all. Yet it is often now overlooked that Mr. Esom had been in post for five years when in 2015 the He... »
In various statements made from the end of 2022 onwards, LBWF Director of Governance and Law, Mark Hynes, reiterated that he aimed to complete the report of his asbestos investigation by June 2023. In May 2023, the Leader, Cllr. Grace Williams, backed him up, telling councillors ‘we are expecting the final report imminently’, and elaborating: ‘the Monitoring Officer anticipates [it] will... »
In the period 2015-20, LBWF ostensibly managed Town Hall asbestos on the basis of a 101-page manual, ‘Asbestos Management Procedure For Main Building Walthamstow Town Hall Complex’, jointly produced with the NPS Group. Amongst other things, this contained a chapter headed ‘Audit Records – Permit to Work’, which explained that ‘The Permit To Work…procedure provides a formal control system aimed at ... »
One organisation that sometimes pops up on the margins of public discussion about how LBWF has managed asbestos in the past few years is NPS London Ltd., recently renamed Evolve Norse Ltd. (so hereafter NPSL/EN) which is a joint venture between – and this gets complicated – LBWF and (via a subsidiary, NPS Property Consultants Ltd.) the national holding company Norse Group Ltd., itself, ... »
As Director of Governance and Law Mark Hynes’ asbestos management investigation limps into its seventh month, so far without any tangible findings, it becomes ever more obvious that one of the major obstacles to him reaching completion is the absence of key evidence that would prove LBWF complied with the law. One revealing illustration of this is some recently unearthed revelations about how LBWF... »
1. In 2022, I discovered that a specialist firm, commissioned on behalf of LBWF, had surveyed the Town Hall two years previously, and found that asbestos was present throughout but especially in the basement, with some of this asbestos defined as ‘high risk’, for example in the form of dust. 2. I further discovered that contractors had worked in the basement on three separate occasions between 201... »
Director of Governance and Law Mark Hynes’ investigation into my apprehension that, from 2015 to 2021, LBWF may not have managed the large amounts of asbestos that riddled the Town Hall in line with the demands of the relevant health and safety legislation, has now run for exactly 100 working days, yet so far failed to deliver a single finding. Mr. Hynes last comment on the subject was an e-mail o... »