In early June of this year, I asked LBWF under the Freedom of Information Act for a list of its current Prevent contracts, with for each its start and finish dates, the name of the contractor, the value of the contract, and a brief description of what the contract aims to achieve. A few days ago, my request was refused, with LBWF arguing as follows: ‘Waltham Forest Council recognises the public in... »
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... »
LBWF is due in Southwark Crown Court on Friday 29 May for sentencing over its conviction for breaking health and safety legislation in relation to asbestos in the Town Hall. In the subsequent fall-out, further questions no doubt will be asked about how LBWF interacted with NPS London Ltd, since in formal terms the latter was a key player in the authority’s Asbestos Policy (for which see the ‘... »
Stop press: Mr Fenwick provides a full reply to our e-mail of 20 March 2015. 26 March 2015 ‘Dear Mr Tiratsoo, Thank you for your email. Its contents are noted. The Council has provided a response to your original queries and explained the relationship between NPS(London) Ltd and the Council. Daniel Fenwick Director of Governance’ 20 March 2015 ‘Dear Mr. Fenwick, Tha... »
On 27 January 2015, Trevor Calver and I called for LBWF Chief Executive Martin Esom to resign over the Town Hall asbestos affair. Here is the correspondence that followed in date order, beginning at the bottom with our initial e-mail. 20 March 2015 ‘Dear Mr. Fenwick, Thank you for your e-mail. Most of it of course is entirely irrelevant to the points that we raised with Mr. Esom on 27... »
Exactly one month ago, Trevor Calver and I wrote LBWF Chief Executive Martin Esom the following e-mail: Dear Mr. Esom, In November 2012, we wrote to you about the potential conflict of interest inherent in concurrently you being chief executive of LBWF and board member of NPS London Ltd.. You told us that you understood the risks, and had taken steps to mitigate them, explaining: ‘I fully r... »
Councils inevitably dispose of unwanted public assets from time to time, and it is always interesting to discover exactly how they do so, and who benefits. The following is a tale of what happens in Waltham Forest, and as might be predicted, it provokes more questions than it answers. On 14 June 2011, the LBWF Cabinet agreed to lease the Argall Avenue car parks to ‘BID’, a fair assumption being ... »
A couple of years ago, I started hearing some very surprising things about Leytonstone’s Business Improvement District (BID) company, the E11 Bid Co.. The allegation, in short, was that the directors of the company had failed to keep proper books and neglected to pay their taxes; run up substantial debts; and as a consequence jeopardised the company’s ‘going concern’ status... »
Back in September 2014, Waltham Forest’s Chief Executive, Martin Esom, was awarded a very large pay increase, amounting to £15,000 or 8.7 per cent, and this took his salary to £195,000 p.a.. With some justification, the Waltham Forest Guardian reported the story under the headline ‘Inflation busting pay rise for town hall boss’. Given his level of remuneration, one might expect that Mr. Esom would... »
The Council’s recent conviction over the asbestos dust that it allowed to pollute the Town Hall has been well covered in the local press, see for example: http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/11734109.Council_admits_failing_to_protect_staff_from_deadly_asbestos/ http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/11746274.Confusion_over_town_hall_asbestos_scandal_as_contractor_denies_involvement/ http://www.... »