The Waltham Forest Guardian‘s Tom Barnes has just filed an online story reporting that, following a prosecution brought by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Balfour Beatty Regional Construction, NPS London Ltd., and Squibb Group Ltd. today have been fined in all over £1m. for breaking various safety regulations in connection with the removal of asbestos at St Mary’s Church of Eng... »
I post Mr. Esom’s responses below. Much of what he writes is self-evidently vague, and seems to have been written with the explicit aim of avoiding giving anything away, hardly appropriate in the light of the seriousness of both the events in question and the wider situation that we find ourselves in. Regarding the ‘community award’, I understand that LBWF is claiming that every visitor to the May... »
Harry’s Place has further revelations about the Cllr. Khan affair: http://hurryupharry.org/2016/04/18/meet-the-friends-of-corbynista-vicar-steven-saxby/ It certainly does seem strange that a person who apparently feels the imagery pasted below is acceptable now finds himself honoured with a ‘community award’ by councillors, including Madam Mayor, on LBWF property. I’ve poin... »
Word reaches me that earlier in the week Labour councillors were circulated with an e-mail which announced that Cllr. Ahsan Khan, Cabinet Member for Health and Wellbeing, had stepped down from the Cabinet, pending an independent investigation by the LBWF Monitoring Officer. What appears to have happened is that Cllr. Khan organised an event in the Town Hall, attended by the Mayor, which was then t... »
An interesting and very concerning report on the Lea Bridge Rd. Mosque has been published at the blog Harry’s Place: http://hurryupharry.org/2016/04/06/the-waltham-forest-islamic-association-conspiracy-theories-antisemitism-and-rejection-of-the-west/ I have written to Martin Esom, LBWF Chief Executive, as follows: ‘Dear Mr. Esom, You no doubt will have seen the recent report on the Lea... »
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... »
From Private Eye, no.1407, 11-18 December 2015: »
I have written before about LBWF’s relationships with the local business sector, and pointed out that our council appears to treat certain businesses and business organisations rather more favourably than might be expected. Money is handed out, and assets handed over, but there seems to be no great urgency about due process. It is all very relaxed, even informal, and contrasts strikingly with the ... »
The following speaks for itself. 18 September 2015 Dear Mr. Esom, We write to you about the letter dated 30 January 2014 that you submitted to the HSE and the courts prior to LBWF’s recent prosecution over Town Hall asbestos contamination. We remind you that this letter was produced in lieu of an interview under PACE; and that you explicitly recognised it might ‘be used in the event of any enforce... »
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... »