NRF

Looking back at the past, an occasional series. Part one: LBWF CEO Roger Kilburn is sacked and walks away with £356,000

September 8, 2021 Cllr. Chris Robbins, Independent Panel, NRF, Youth at Risk

The story reproduced below is from the Oldham Evening Chronicle of 11 June 2010, and deals with the dismissal of current LBWF CEO Martin Esom’s immediate predecessor, Andrew Kilburn. Briefly, Mr. Kilburn had come to Waltham Forest with a big reputation, gained during a long career in local government, and burnished by his recent leadership of Oldham Council through a period of heightened... »

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... »

Documenting Past Failures: (8) the self-defeating silence of Councillor Marie Pye

March 13, 2015 Cllr. Marie Pye

Shortly after the Independent Panel report, I attended a Community Council meeting, and heard Cllr. Marie Pye vociferously denying any responsibility for the NRF/BNI fiasco. So I wrote her an open letter explaining why I thought she was wrong. Needless to say, in true Waltham Forest style, she never replied. However, to some extent the last laugh is on her, because if you Google ‘Cllr. Marie... »

Documenting Past Failures: (6) Cllr. Loakes, PwC, and the BNI Community Cohesion Projects

March 6, 2015 BNI Community Cohesion Projects, Cllr. Clyde Loakes

As I have described in the previous post in this series, the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report was a revelation. The figures already recounted tell much of the story. But to get a full picture of the chaos that PwC uncovered, it is necessary to look at some of its unpublished findings on individual BNI files, and there is no better place to start than with the batch concerning ‘community c... »

Documenting Past Failures: (4) NRF, EduAction, and the Youth At Risk programme

February 10, 2015 EduAction, NRF, Youth at Risk

Between 2003 and 2006, LBWF paid EduAction £340,000 for a programme called ‘Youth at Risk’, the objective of which was to reduce exclusions from schools in targeted areas, broadly the poorer parts of the borough. From 2006 onwards, rumours about this programme began to spread, with the central allegation being that EduAction had not spent the money as intended. Various investigations ensued, and a... »

Documenting Past Failures: (3) NRF, EduAction and an open letter to Cllr. Chris Robbins

February 10, 2015 Cllr. Chris Robbins, EduAction, NRF

One of the outside organisations that LBWF paid NRF monies to was EduAction, or more properly EduAction Waltham Forest Ltd., a joint venture formed by Amey Plc (‘one of today’s leading public services providers’) and Nord Anglia Education. In the 2000s, EduAction ran the schools in the borough, after a damning Ofsted report at the turn of the century had disposed of the idea that the l... »

Documenting Past Failures: (2) NRF and Dr. Foster

February 10, 2015 Dr. Foster, NRF, The BNI

The Dr. Foster episode is one that always will be close to my heart, not only because it demonstrated everything that was wrong about the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund (NRF)/Better Neighbourhoods Initiative (BNI) programme, but also because it had a surprising kick in the tail, and one that was highly gratifying to me. The story is as follows – and I apologise for the minutiae, but as will become cle... »

Documenting Past Failures: (1) Introduction

February 4, 2015 Cllr. Clyde Loakes, NRF, Past failures: overview, The BNI

Over the coming months, and at irregular intervals, I’ll be posting Documenting Past Failures pieces, which will look at some of the episodes that I’ve been involved in since 2004, broadly in chronological sequence. To start with, I’ll be looking mostly at how LBWF used Neighbourhood Renewal Fund monies. The background is as follows. In 2001, the government launched a new Nationa... »

Some background: a short history of local scandals

February 2, 2015 Past failures: overview

Here’s an article that I contributed to the Dec14/Jan15 issue of Labour Briefing (which I reproduce with the kind permission of the editors). It looks at some recent Waltham Forest history, and gives more than a clue as to why this blog was set up. Waltham Forest’s missing millions ‘In 2009, spurred on by a spate of bad publicity about its flagship Neighbourhood Renewal Fund (NRF... »