Good to see Cllr. Liaquat Ali out supporting Andy Burnham on his recent visit to Waltham Forest (see http://kashmirlinklondon.co.uk/?p=6862)

I hear from well placed sources that should our Andy win the Labour leadership, he will make Cllr. Ali one of his key advisers on solving London’s housing problems.

PS Of course every picture tells a story, and here it is interesting to see the aged Leader of LBWF, Cllr. Chris Robbins, relegated to the back row, right – he certainly does not appear to have appreciated the joke.

PPS There is surely, too, an unintended irony re Cllr. Liaquat Ali in the wording of the right-hand poster.

Mention of Clli. Liaquat Ali as always brings a weighty postbag, with those who have met the great man eager to share their memories.

So by way of a thank you, I reprint some photos of when our local benefactor to the otherwise homeless met the Queen.

It’s a slightly odd sequence, because the warm handshake that seems about to happen in fact never does.

I’ve always wondered why.

But no doubt our monarch had her reasons….

If a recent exchange of correspondence is anything to go by, the Barnett-Dhedi affair (covered in two previous posts) has turned decidedly nasty.

Writing on behalf of the Waltham Forest Council of Mosques to Cllr. Robbins, Media Officer Irfan Akhta’s stance is predictably shrill. Cllr. Barnett’s infelicitous language is ‘Islamaphobic’ and ‘grossly offensive’. Religious viewpoints  must be ‘respected’ and ‘understood’. The fact that an internal Labour Party investigation found Cllr. Barnett had no case to answer only adds insult to injury. ‘The community’ was owed an explanation. The investigation should have been ‘an open, transparent process’ with ‘the public…kept informed’. What actually happened was ‘non-transparent’ and ‘raised more questions than answers’. Now, not only are Cllr. Barnett’s Muslim constituents afraid to approach him, but the local Labour Party itself stands accused of being insufficiently vigilant in opposing ‘all forms of discrimination, including Islamophobia’. Even ‘Muslim cllrs’ are chastised, for apparently insisting on due process. In the minds of zealots, thus are molehills turned into mountains.

By contrast, Cllr. Robbins response is very surprising indeed. His tone is notably tart. Having originally consulted the Waltham Forest Council of Mosques over the Barnett-Dhedi affair (at least if its central protagonist is to be believed), Cllr. Robbins now emphasises that this is a private Labour matter, which must be addressed in terms of its rule book. And he also suggests that the Waltham Forest Council of Mosques may be intent on promoting divisions, a point underlined in his parting shot that his door will remain firmly closed to those who are ‘stirring up hatred and pitting communities against one another’.

There is also a sting in the tail. For it is revealed that because he recently spoke to the Waltham Forest Guardian, Cllr. Barnett is to be suspended for a further three months.

Looked at in perspective, this is clearly yet another skirmish in Waltham Forest Labour’s continuing civil wars; the vanities on display are markedly unappealing; and it is difficult (on the basis of the evidence that is currently in the public domain) to see much merit on either side.

But there are also some serious issues emerging. What are we to make of a party which forbids elected councillors from speaking to the local press? To repeat, Cllr. Barnett was found by an external inquiry to have no case to answer. If the Labour hierarchy declined to make this public, surely Cllr. Barnett had every reason to? After all, his integrity and reputation were at stake.  Is the decision to suspend him anew in itself not an attack on free speech and democracy? What exactly is the Labour leadership so afraid of?

Likewise, what of Cllr. Barnett’s contention in his defence statement (published on this website) that Cllr. Dhedi was the causa causans of this whole affair, by placing on Facebook ‘a post…which was clearly an attempt to justify the murders of the Charlie hebdo [sic] cartoonists’? Either this is true, or it is an invention, but whichever is the case, significant repercussions must surely follow.

Finally, someone, somewhere, must have the full transcript of the two Facebook friends’ conversation on that fateful night.

Dare we hope for a ‘rabbit out of the hat’ moment?

Now that will be fun….

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 enforcement proceedings’. We further remind you that in the letter, you underline that you are intent upon ‘frankly’ dealing with the issues at hand.

All this being the case, we are very surprised at some of the points that you make, and three are especially troubling.

1. The availability of the 2002 Town Hall asbestos survey

One issue in the trial was how LBWF had treated the 2002 asbestos survey of the Town Hall, and whether it had made the survey available to those contractors who subsequently were employed there.

At point 14 of your letter you write: ‘LBWF wishes to emphasise that the 2002 survey was always available to contractors’.

However, witnesses who gave evidence at the trial told a different story.

Angela Ferdinand Sergeant, a senior LBWF employee, stated that: ‘“The policy for contractors working in any LB Waltham Forest building is to provide a permit of work and a copy of the asbestos register or survey. However, in the Town Hall the asbestos survey was not readily available”’.

Ellen Beckerman, a technical and project manager with GBNS Ltd., stated that, having been asked to provide a quote ‘to do a refurbishment survey on the [Town Hall] ground floor’ in December 2011, her company was not provided with copies of previous surveys or asbestos history prior to starting work.

Keith Stafford, an asbestos surveyor/analyst with GBNS Ltd., corroborated, observing: ‘When I first came to the town hall on the 19^th [January 2012] I asked around and eventually found an asbestos survey from 2002’ [emphasis added].

And a gas engineer who worked on the boilers in the Town Hall basement stated: ‘“I have never been given any information about the asbestos in the basement or any of the buildings I have worked in. I have not been shown copies of any asbestos surveys or registers whilst working in buildings in Waltham Forest”’.

2. The extent of remedial work after the 2002 Town Hall asbestos survey

At point 19 of your letter, you write: ‘There is unfortunately, due to the passage of time, no documentary evidence confirming that the recommended remedial steps in respect of the Category B items [in the 2002 survey] were conducted. It is submitted by LBWF that any removal or encapsulation works would have been undertaken as part of the routine asbestos management regime…it is assumed that the recommendations were remedied, as the same items are not identified in later surveys’.

However, this paragraph, and particularly its last sentence, is directly at odds with evidence provided by one of the most authoritative witnesses, the aforementioned Keith Stafford, who, writing of his experiences in early 2012, stated to the court as follows: ‘The second time I saw the 2002 survey was during the meeting on 1^st February [2012]. As I was flicking through the 2002 survey I noticed that the picture shown on page 29 for Room 12 was exactly like the one I had taken the previous day…in the same room. The pictures shows 4 pipes which had been cut off, most likely with an oxy-acetylene torch, with asbestos lagging on the pipes which has been highly damaged. The asbestos debris can be seen on the small shelf just below the pipes. The pictures in my report…show asbestos on the filing cabinet and the floor below’.

In addition, we note, having examined the two surveys in detail, that it is very difficult to compare them, due both to their differing scope, and changes in the basement’s physical layout and nomenclature; and we also underline the obvious point that anyway the 2012 surveyors made no systematic attempt to re-examine the finding of their 2002 predecessors, and indeed (as Mr. Stafford’s evidence shows) until fairly late in the day were actually unclear as to their nature – all of which which casts further doubt on the veracity of your observations.

3. Use of the basement

Your letter contains two references to those who used the basement prior to 2012.

At point 12, you state: ‘The basement was used in the main by the legal, finance and electoral departments as an archive/filing area; therefore a small number of employees on these teams would have deposited and retrieved files. Other teams would have used the basement to a lesser extent merely to deposit files for storage on an occasional basis. The reprographics team would have also used the basement’.

At point 52 (b) your concluding ‘submission’ is that ‘The basement was not used as a heavily occupied work place, but an infrequently accessed storage area’.

However, again the reality is not as you present it. For you first downplay and then ignore the very salient fact – substantiated to the court by no less than seven witnesses – that the basement was not just a storage area but also housed the print room, which the reprographics team occupied, not intermittently, but on a permanent basis.

And if in 2014 you really were in any doubt on this matter, you could have also consulted the GBNS report of 2012 – in earlier correspondence you admitted having this in your possession – which shows incontrovertibly on pp. 93 and 94 that the print room was (a) used by 4 to 10 staff on a daily basis for between three and six hours, and (b) contaminated.

As the chief executive of a council making a statement to a court of law, it goes without saying that you have a duty to ensure that your evidence is comprehensive, unambiguous, and truthful. Based on the examples cited, we believe that you have fallen well below the required standard. Indeed, it appears to us that the statements we have highlighted are inexcusably inaccurate, and potentially misleading, certainly far from ‘frank’ iterations of the facts.

Finally, we note that others more qualified than ourselves have come to similar conclusions. Mr. Tilley’s submission to the court on behalf of the HSE itemises and then demolishes your fallacies, case by case. And it is notable, too, that when LBWF’s counsel at the Westminster hearing – no doubt having alighted upon your concluding ‘submission’ – made the point that the Town Hall basement was used only as a storage area, he was slapped down by the judge on the basis of the witness statements, and had to correct himself.

Given the serious nature of these matters, we trust that you will respond in full and by return.

Yours sincerely,

Trevor Calver and Nick Tiratsoo

During his relatively short time in the public eye, Cllr. Johar Khan has attracted a fair amount of publicity, little of it flattering. The commentariat has had fun with his personalised number plates and ostentatious wedding. Peers have been less than impressed by his appetite for work, with one, the illustrious James O’Rourke, alleging: ‘When he and I were Councillors in High Street ward he did sod all’. And the fact that Cllr. Khan was not only much involved in the machinations that prefaced the implosion of the local Liberal Democrats, but also then jumped ship to Labour, has hardly burnished his reputation for either personal loyalty or political principle.

However, one aspect of Cllr. Khan’s activities still remains obscure, and that is his involvement in our old friend, the E11 BID Co..

It should be said at once that according to Companies House – the official authority on all things corporate – Cllr. Khan and the E11 BID Co. never crossed paths. That is to say, while Companies House lists a number of directors as either joining or leaving the E11 BID Co., of Johar Khan, there is no mention.

However, the E11 BID Co., as we know, had idiosyncratic ways, and so it is little surprise to find that, if the company’s own records are consulted, up pops Cllr. Khan at once, listed from early 2009 as a director, and then from September 2010 to May 2011 as no less than ‘the Finance Director’. We learn, too, that though he was eventually voted off the board at the 2011 AGM (a unique achievement as far as I can see, and indicative of his standing amongst colleagues), subsequently he was nevertheless appointed an ‘adviser’.

It is certainly strange that the E11 BID Co. failed to register Cllr. Khan at Companies House, and that Cllr. Khan then did nothing to rectify the matter. However, there is more.

According to the minutes, Cllr. Khan rarely contributed at directors meetings. The one major exception was at the January 2011 board, when he presented a fairly detailed financial report. This was largely unremarkable, though also broadly positive. The E11 BID Co. was owed substantial sums of money. A new accountant had been appointed. And, Cllr Khan added, ‘All VAT, PAYE and tax matters had now been brought up to date’.

No doubt his fellow directors left the meeting reassured. Imagine their consternation, then, seven months later, when they picked up their auditor’s management letter and found it contained the following:

‘During the course of our audit we noted that the company has employees but does not have a payroll scheme registered with H.M. Revenue & Customs (“HMRC”). We further noticed that income tax and national insurance were being deducted from the employee’s [sic] wages but were not being paid over to HMRC…Significant fines and interest may be imposed due to late filing of the returns and payment of the tax due….

We understand that the company is now registered for VAT with HMRC. This means that the company will need to prepare and submit VAT returns electronically every three months.

We understand that the March and June 2010 VAT returns have not yet been completed although these are now past the filing deadlines’.

And imagine their further consternation when they read the succeeding management letter, dated 5 December 2012, and found it repeated almost exactly the same observations:

‘During the course of our audit we noted that income tax and national insurance were being deducted from the employee’s [sic] wages but were not being paid over to H.M. Revenue & Customs…significant penalties and interest can be imposed due to the late filling of returns and payment of the tax due…

We understand that the company has been registered for VAT with H.M. Revenue & Customs since March 2010. This means that the company must prepare and submit VAT returns electronically every three months.

The VAT returns for the year being audited were not completed at the balance sheet date although these are now past the filing deadline. H. M. Revenue & Customs can impose surcharges and interest on the late payment of VAT and the filing of returns’.

How did Cllr. Khan get it so spectacularly wrong? He claimed to be working in banking (first at Lloyds TSB, then at the Bank of Scotland) so presumably was familiar with the basics of tax, and the responsibilities that come with a senior board position. Of course, it is possible that his words were inaccurately minuted, but then he should have made sure they were revised. After all, he had duty not just to the truth, but also to his fellow directors, particularly as some, without financial skills, no doubt would have relied upon his specialist guidance.

All that being the case, is Cllr Khan really the kind of person we want in public office? I’ll let the reader decide.

A reader gets in touch to say that he has found a document in one of the Town Hall skips, and thinks it is a page of a diary feature that the Leader was preparing for WFN.

Personally, I have my doubts, no least because of the Bon Jovi comment (its widely known that Cllr. Loakes is a big Northern Soul fan and so would have chosen Al Wilson’s ‘The Snake’ ).

Maybe one of the many Robbins-ologists out there can give me an expert opinion? I don’t want to end up with egg on my face like that nice Mr. Trevor-Roper.

‘Monday

Day off! Mondays off for the Leader of the Council has to be one of the best things I’ve introduced in my time as Leader of the Council! Everyone talks about the importance of a good work/life balance, and I think I deserve some “Me Time” after all that hand shaking and ribbon cutting. Now, where’s the TV remote, it’s nearly time for Bargain Hunt! (Must make a note to officers to keep my salary of £50,000 quiet as possible. After all, some people might think it’s rather generous for four days attendance).

Tuesday

Driving to the Town Hall I notice that some of the flower boxes at the major traffic junctions are looking a bit shabby. Phone the Head of Green Space who is as always anxious to please. ‘Yes Leader, of course, we’ll get some new planting to adorn your processional route’. Not being sure that I heard him properly, I ask: “Adorn the processional route?” “No Leader, I adore your professionalism”.

It’s great to be appreciated by your workforce!

Run through my diary with PA. Looks like the Trade Unions want to meet but they really need to understand that, despite my former career as a Trade Union official, I really don’t have very much (or any) interest in their concerns.

Pre-cabinet meeting. Cllr Coghill makes us laugh by telling us she convinced a Ward Forum that she wanted to hear their views! She’s learning fast, although to be fair, her politics have always been as flexible as mine. I see her as Leader in waiting, but she’ll be waiting quite a long time if I have anything to do with it! We skim through some lengthy papers on forthcoming cuts (although I’m not sure anyone reads these), before getting to the highlight – the events programme for next year. Lots of Big Weekenders for me to attend! I always try and spin these as bringing the community together but in truth, I just like fireworks.

Wednesday

Planning meeting for the Love Your Borough awards. One of the highlights of my year to be honest, with all the glitz and glamour. Not sure what song to have playing in the background when I come on stage to give my big speech. Cllr Coghill suggests Right Said Fred’s “I’m too Sexy…” but I’ll have to Google it later as I’m not familiar with it. Cllr Loakes says “Living on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi….

This year we have introduced a special category of Leader of the Council awards. I want to give it to Riney. Somebody from the Legal Department has pointed out the giving an award to one of our contractors at the same time as the contractors funding the award ceremony may look a bit odd. (Note to self – have a word with the Chief Executive to make sure Legal Department attend our corporate culture induction programme – they will soon learn how we do things in WF!) My suggestion of having a Leader’s award for Best Council Leader seems to fall a bit flat. Maybe there’s a technicality I’ve missed?

Thursday

Meeting with Michael Poledri – a true friend of the Borough. Discussed [Redacted] and [Redacted] and [Redacted]. Great doing business with our corporate partners!

Cabinet Meeting. Since moving it to 2pm, the rest of the day is now free for attending dinners and functions, or watching Antiques Road Trip and Eggheads while I have my dinner. Having it in the afternoon also keeps the public away which is no bad thing! They only want to talk down all the good news I bring them like closing their Pool & Track and they never seem to join in with the round of applause I’ve introduced with each agenda item.

Friday

David Cameron has launched a review of Freedom of Information. I wholeheartedly agree that all those pesky requests for information on things like asbestos inhibit our ability to discuss policy, so I’ve asked our Head of Compliance to draft a reply to the consultation. In our view, Freedom of Information is a form of mischief making, with the usual suspects asking all sorts of scurrilous questions about things they don’t understand, like asbestos.

Draft of Waltham Forest News ready for review. Thank goodness we’ve seen the back of Eric Pickles and his threats to cancel our weekly propaganda, I mean good news stories. To show true Leadership, I make several amendments in red biro by adding the word ‘brilliant’ to a number of paragraphs about our Borough and it’s brilliant Leader!

Councillor Loakes pops in for quick chat. I always enjoy these “chats” but find he does most of the talking. He has a further list of things he wants to close down in the borough and seems quite animated by the prospect. I suggest he has another look at the list and see if it could be slightly more positive. I need to reign him in a bit, last time he was let loose it cost us £100k in legal fees!

Saturday

Leytonstone Big Weekender. I know some boroughs have cut back on this type of activity but I think it’s essential to allow Councillors to be seen out and about (but not to answer questions obviously!), and to show the people who’s in charge. I’ve already authorised a draft press release about how well attended it was!

Sunday

My Annual Garden party! The much anticipated event of the year where aspiring councillors come to pay homage, er I mean come to eat burgers with the Leader! This event is similar in importance to Rupert Murdoch’s conference on Hayman Island that Tony Blair famously attended, only this one is held in my back garden.

UPDATE – unfortunately the garden party has had to be cancelled as no one RSVPd. Cllr Loakes said this was due to my declining influence as Leader, but that can’t be true, can it?’

To no-one’s real surprise, the current edition of Private Eye once again features LBWF, with a fairly long piece tracing the Fred Wigg and John Walsh Towers’ fiasco (see below, from No.1403, 16 October to 29 October 2015), also covered in previous posts here. 

This is further embarrassment for local councillor and Liberal turncoat Keith Rayner, who despite claiming to have lived in one of the Towers sometime in the hazy past, and being given to lachrymose descriptions of Tory-induced poverty, now parrots his new senior Labour colleagues’ line that the planned privatisation, and the resulting re-location of many existing tenants, whatever their wishes, must go ahead come hell or high water.

However, the story clearly has legs far beyond the likes of small fry like Rayner.  One particularly intriguing issue that has escaped much attention so far is the role played by AECOM Design+Planning (formerly EDAW AECOM) and BNP Paribas Real Estate (formally Atisreal). For while both are very big businesses indeed, with international portfolios, it was they who – rather surprisingly – were engaged by LBWF to complete an estates review in 2010, and in their final report then recommended almost exactly the kind of redevelopment that is now being contemplated. I doubt that either company is motivated solely by altruism. It will be interesting to see what else about their involvement now emerges.

I have been meaning to write about Waltham Forest’s Gang Prevention Programme (GPP) for some time, and now seems as good a time as any. The GPP is coming towards the end of its fourth year, has cost several million pounds, and garnered significant national attention. Yet this summer the local newspaper reported a series of seemingly awful stabbings, shootings, and murders, often featuring young people either as victims of perpetrators, and a couple of weeks ago alleged that there had been a ‘riot’ in Walthamstow – a story that then went national. So it is apposite to ask: has the GPP made a difference, and if so, of what importance?

First, a personal note. I was involved in the predecessors that led up to the GPP, and then joined the A Better Way Partnership Board (ABWPB), the programme’s official community partner, subsequently becoming its secretary, before resigning in 2015. It is true that I was never an insider, but I did have a detailed view of unfolding developments, and also collected a good deal of documentation. So what follows, I hope, is solidly grounded.

The GPP was formally launched in early 2011, and as regards its scope and ambition was something of a brave departure. Previously, anti-gang work in Waltham Forest had been fragmented, with the many agencies and community groups involved rarely speaking to each other in any coherent way. Now, the promise was to bring everyone together, and get them working within the parameters of a common strategy, headed by a dedicated coordinator.  The approach to those involved in gangs was also novel. It was recognised that enforcement action against individuals was necessary, of course, but in itself not sufficient. The reality was that arrests could dent gang activity but not eradicate it. The key challenge was to convince gang members that their lifestyle was not just lethally dangerous but also a complete dead-end. And this meant, on the one hand providing real alternatives, and on the other, mobilising family, friends, and ultimately the local community as a moral force actively promoting change.

However, it needs to be added that the GPP was not simply a leap into the dark. Similar approaches had been tried in Boston and Strathclyde, with apparently promising results; the endeavour had high-level support, chiming in, for example, with thinking emanating from Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice, particularly the report Dying to Belong of 2009; while several key community activists, who had seen at first hand how current approaches were failing, vocally supported a change of direction. Programmes like the GPP are always hazardous. On this occasion the risks were mitigated.

At first, the new programme unfolded relatively smoothly. LBWF explicitly signaled that it saw anti-gang work as a priority. Funding flowed from the Leader’s Priority Fund, the LBWF Community Safety budget, a special arrangement with RSL Ascham Homes, and the Home Office. A professional with significant experience was recruited to be the all important programme coordinator. A hierarchy of joint committees emerged to deal with governance, including emergencies. The Family Partnership Team was created to implement the hard work of first contacting and then where possible engaging with gang members and their families. The Met provided extra resources, including officers from Operation Connect who were expert in the collation of intelligence. The ABWPB gained membership and momentum, and began carving out its role as community voice and critical friend. The Youth Independent Advisory Group, formed in 2009, was integrated. The move away from the fragmentation of the past was tangible.

But as the months passed, it became increasingly evident that the GPP was subject to some debilitating flaws. First, there was a notable degree of largely unhelpful politicisation. The context encouraged the process. Because of its relative novelty, the GPP attracted interest in the corridors of power, and ministers and Home Office officials regularly checked up on its progress. Never slow to recognise an opportunity that promised status and perhaps more money, LBWF responded by wherever possible by playing to the gallery. Staff time was diverted into a range of promotional activities, such as conference appearances and applications for awards. And for the same reason, public statements about the GPP’s performance tended to focus on headline friendly aspects of enforcement, for example a narrow range of crime data, often expressed solely in terms of crude percentage variations, with the historically very poor local sanction detection rates invariably ignored.[1]

An indicative early example of what subsequently became an entrenched trend occurred in October 2011, when Council Leader Chris Robbins addressed the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, and was notably upbeat in his assessments. The GPP, he remarked, ‘must have provided some substance’ to why Waltham Forest had avoided the recent pan-London riots, adding ‘It cannot just be a coincidence that we have reduced our violent crime figures’. The former claim might appear plausible, but a moment’s thought suggested otherwise. A priori, was it likely that a programme launched in early 2011, and inevitably measured as it found its feet, might, only six months later, in itself have prevented rioting? Moreover, as regards violent crime, Robbins was again on shaky ground. Indeed, an authoritative LBWF briefing paper, which examined the data for the six months to September 2011, suggested that far from declining during this period, ‘serious youth violence’ had in fact increased by 28 per cent.

A second flaw related to the GPP’s core management.  Similar programmes in other boroughs were staffed by five or six professionals. LBWF employed one coordinator and one, sometimes two, other officers. That meant that their combined workload was consistently challenging, involving (amongst other things) liaison with gang members and their families; programme administration, budgeting, contracting, and monitoring; meetings with politicians, councillors, and other assorted interested parties; handling the press; and even drafting councillors’ speeches. Against this background, there was inevitably slippage, and hard choices to be made about priorities. The ABWPB wanted the programme to be promoted vigorously amongst local residents,  and offered its services on a number of occasions, yet was rebuffed. Efforts to produce suitable literature were to some extent stymied by internal wrangling within the Town Hall. Nevertheless, it was clear, too, that those of the heart of the GPP were anyway wary about publicity simply because they feared that the programme might be swamped by requests for assistance. Frustrated by this situation, the ABWPB petitioned LBWF Chief Executive Martin Esom to beef up the GPP management, but found him obdurate.

Finally, there was a range of concerns about the contribution of the police. One constant difficulty stemmed from the fact that police officers – particularly senior police officers – regularly changed jobs, and so it was hard to build up any continuity in terms of involvement in the GPP. In addition, since wider Met concerns ebbed and flowed, with different ‘operations’ following each other in bewildering succession, and officer numbers fluctuating as a result, there was always some imprecision about exactly what weight was being given to what. Predictably, in discussions with prominent politicians, the Home Office, or City Hall, youth crime was always stated to be a priority, but whether this necessarily reflected reality on the ground was open to question.

Complicating matters further was the issue of how the police related to the GPP’s particular approach. Policing was – and had always been – primarily about catching criminals. Now officers were being asked to take part in a programme where enforcement was only one of several constituent ingredients. That alone created tensions. But there was a further troublesome dimension. Expert views about what constituted gang activity, even about how a gang should be defined, tended to vary, with only limited common ground. In this situation, the temptation was to fall back on the idea that any group of young people mixing together constituted a potential threat, a stance that had the added advantage of intuitively appealing to many adults in the wider population. Needless to say, some officers remained steadfastly committed to the GPP’s methodology and aims, but there were also times when their more traditionally minded colleagues got the upper hand, and on such occasions, the collateral damage could be significant, with fragile relationships laboriously built up over time strained or broken.

 Against this background, the ABWPB spent more and more time attempting to keep the GPP true to its origins.  There were a few successes, and one was very revealing. In 2013, the ABWPB sought clarification about the ‘the matrix’, the police listing of the 200 or so top ‘gang nominals’ in Waltham Forest, and discovered that 120 had no record of, or connection to, violent crime, and were included simply because of their alleged ‘affiliation’ to gang members, with ‘affiliation’ apparently covering everything from suspected involvement in joint enterprise to wholly innocent school or neighbourhood friendships. Nor was there any mechanism, it emerged, for removing those who had been first included, however they subsequently fared, and one name on the list in fact was found to be long dead.  The upshot was a police promise to make ‘the matrix’ more robust, with regular reviews of the nominals, and excision of those who offered no threat. This was a positive outcome. But in other cases, and despite the considerable efforts of the organisation’s very capable chair, the ABWPB’s efforts were either sidestepped or ignored. Typically, when the Borough Commander was challenged to pursue the so called overlords who were supplying local neighbourhood gangs with drugs, he retorted mystifyingly that this was not in his power, and only Scotland Yard could so act.

In early 2014, the suspicions that had been growing about the GPP were largely confirmed. Commissioned by LBWF, the consultant Cordis Bright exhaustively examined how the programme was working, and came to some fairly devastating conclusions. There was, Cordis Bright concluded, ‘still…no consistent mechanism for measuring the outcomes of the programme…against its original objectives’.  Even an assessment of those who had received direct assistance to escape the gang life style was difficult, because no data was available on their ‘background characteristics, the nature of intervention they receive and how much support they receive, and the impact of the support received on outcomes’. Thus, while it was true that serious youth violence, gun crime and knife crime offences had fallen in the borough over the past two years, the lack of solid monitoring data meant that ‘It may be that the GPP has made some contribution to this reduction…however, caution should be applied in suggesting that the GPP is solely responsible…i.e. a range of interventions and services may be contributing’. Even the GPP’s finances turned out to be problematic, with Cordis Bright reporting that they were ‘not regarded as transparent by the majority of stakeholders’, and adding in a damning coda: ‘Although there was some awareness among key decision makers and community members about the overall budget and spend of the GPP, they explained that they were not provided with detailed information about spending (including among the core team) [emphasis added]’.[2]

By 2015, the GPP appeared becalmed. The coordinator’s contract was not renewed, and responsibility for running the programme passed to two officers with much broader portfolios. Uncertainty about future funding persisted. The wider scandal over the Met’s massaging of crime statistics further dented the credibility of claimed outcomes. Those in the know believed that knife crime in Waltham Forest, far from subsiding, was actually increasing. Meanwhile, the upper echelons of LBWF seemed to have lost interest, focusing instead on the government’s latest priorities, Troubled Families and Prevent. Symptomatically, another report from Cordis Bright, due at the beginning of the year, is still pending, amid rumours that it has been quietly ditched to avoid adverse publicity.

All in all, it is undeniable that, over its lifetime, the GPP has done some good, but also clear that it has nowhere near fulfilled its potential. Some of the underperformance relates to factors that are largely inescapable. All anti-gang work is unusually demanding. With their different occupational cultures, professionals do not necessarily meld together. The police force has its own complicated dynamics.

However, with that said, LBWF’s stance has done little to help. There is scant excuse for the politicisation and under-resourcing of management that has occurred, not least because each had been clearly identified as blighting previous programmes of a similar type, such as the NRF/BNI and Worknet (for which see earlier posts).

In 2009, the Independent Panel investigated LBWF and famously concluded: ‘Good organisations learn from problems and rectify them. Waltham Forest appears to do neither’. Sadly, the GPP is a further illustration of this formulation’s pertinence.

In a recent post on his blog about the downsides of one-party administrations in local government, John Gray, councillor for West Ham ward in Newham, writes as follows:

‘Finally, I think just as important as electoral reform, local government needs structural and legislative reform. Such as making the role of scrutiny committees much more robust and truly independent of the Executive; beefing up Standard Boards; time limits on Council leaders; stopping backbench Councillors being refused information by Chief officers for no substantiated reasons; being open and transparent and stop restricting information to the public or press unless absolutely necessary; making officers’ hospitality register a public document; better guidance from national political organisations on the role of elected members as being champions of their constituents and holding the Executive to account. Last but not least, we should reintroduce powers to surcharge individual Councillors who act without due care or legal authority with public money’.

(http://grayee.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/one-party-councils-accountablity.html)

This seems to me to be excellent good sense, and exactly the kind of agenda we need in Waltham Forest.

At present, there are certainly rumblings of discontent here about how business is conducted. Labour backbenchers frequently complain to me that they don’t know what is going on, because decision-making is so centralised. One or two have come within a hair’s breadth of saying so in public. The Tory opposition believes itself to be marginalised, and is fearful of losing even what limited constitutional rights it currently enjoys. Everyone in the Town Hall saw the recent scrutiny committee investigating Worknet being shut down because council officers evaded appearing before it. I could write a book about my experiences of trying to obtain information about how LBWF spends large sums of public money. Local journalists no doubt could do the same. And so on.

Perhaps it is time to turn these rumblings into something more effective, and create a non-partisan alliance to pursue Cllr. Gray’s suggestions?

 Hat-tip:http://forestgate.net

On the subject of local government reform, it is notable that another of our neighbours, Tower Hamlets, also has begun examining the status quo, in this case through the medium of a Transparency Commission, described in an August press release as follows:

‘The council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee has launched an Overview and Scrutiny Transparency Commission (OSTC) to identify actions the council should take to improve transparency, openness and accountability.

The Commission began its work at the July 27 Overview and Scrutiny Committee (OSC) meeting. The OSC meetings in September, October and November will each have a specific focus, exploring particular aspects of transparency, openness and accountability in the council.

Transparency was a key theme of the recent Mayoral election in Tower Hamlets. The government is also encouraging all councils to provide more information on how they are spending public money and about the decisions they make.

As part of its work, OSTC will take evidence from journalists, council officers, the Executive Mayor, relevant national organisations and other interested parties.

OSTC will also be conducting a survey of local residents and organisations to find out their views on transparency.

Councillor John Pierce, Chair of Overview and Scrutiny Committee said:

“We all want to move Tower Hamlet Council forward to enable it to become a beacon council for transparency, openness and accountability. Over the coming months, Overview and Scrutiny Transparency Commission will investigate and discuss ideas and make recommendations for the new Mayor to implement. Last year, the previous Mayor did not attend any of his Mayoral spotlight sessions. We need to make transparency a default on all decision making and access to information. We need to improve our council’s constitution to ensure no representative or decision maker within the council can ever evade public scrutiny again.”’

In response, the blog Love Wapping has made some interesting suggestions about necessary reforms, and provided links to the kind of things that are going on in other places, both in the UK and abroad, see here:

http://lovewapping.org/2015/08/tower-hamlets-council-transparency-commission-begins-work/

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 way that, for example, LBWF commonly interacts with the local community and charity sector (as I can vouchsafe).

Against this background, I have been looking again at the legal contracts that LBWF has signed with the E11 BID Co., specifically the Operating and Baseline agreements covering the first BID period, 2008-12, and then their almost identical successors for the second BID period, 2013-18.

The most interesting sections of these contracts, as will become clear, relate to monitoring and reporting.

For those new to the subject, the broad relationship between LBWF and the E11 BID Co. works as follows. LBWF has responsibility for collecting the annual BID levy from local traders (calculated as a percentage of rateable value); it then passes that on to the E11 BID Co.; and the E11 BID Co. spends the money as it chooses. In addition, LBWF is contractually required to deliver a package of baseline activities in the E11 BID area (referred to as ‘Standard Services’), covering matters such as highway maintenance, street lighting, street cleansing, and so on, pledging that these will be ‘at its own cost’, i.e. not paid for from the levy.

As will be immediately obvious, this is an unusual arrangement, and consequently the contracts involved contain quite elaborate safeguards. Responsibilities here are shared, and require that, amongst other things:

1. LBWF produces an ‘Annual Council Report to the BID Company’, covering such issues as the ‘effectiveness of the collection and enforcement of the BID levy’;

2. the E11 BID Co. produces an ‘Annual BID Company Report to the Council’, detailing inter alia (a) its receipts from levy payers and other sources, and (b) its total expenditure;

3. a joint Standard Services Review Panel meets at least twice yearly; and

4. the Standard Services are jointly reviewed annually.

All of this seems eminently sensible and proportionate. The levy payers can find out whether their money is being spent sensibly. Local taxpayers can reassure themselves that LBWF is providing the right level of ‘Standard Services’ but no more – in other words that there is no hidden subsidy. It is a set of arrangements that promises transparency, and thus accountability.

However, it now emerges that, whatever the contracts say, the reality has been very different.

By my calculation, since 2008, the two sides should have generated 16 annual reports, and eight reviews; and in addition be able to show that they have met at least 16 times.

So, using the Freedom of Information Act, I have asked a series of questions to discover whether all this activity actually occurred.

And guess what? The only thing that LBWF is able to produce by way of a response is the minutes of a single meeting in 2008 – in other words a mere one-fortieth of what on the basis of the contracts I could legitimately expect to see.

This is fairly astonishing stuff. LBWF has gone to the trouble of completing legally binding agreements with a ‘favoured partner’, but then completely ignored a very important part of their contents. Furthermore, by acting in this way, LBWF has badly let down local traders, who pay the levy, and local taxpayers, who one way or another finance the council. The promise of transparency and accountability is revealed as a total sham.

So what does LBWF say about this? Well, on 23 September 2015, I wrote to Chief Executive Martin Esom and asked for an explanation.

Despite his enormous salary, Mr. Esom does not deign to communicate with mere residents such as myself, and so the reply I have received is from Lucy Shomali, LBWF’s very recently appointed Director Regeneration and Growth. This reads as follows:

‘I am writing on behalf of the Chief Executive, Martin Esom, in response to your email of the 23rd September.

I refer to your…correspondence concerning the E11 BID Company, and the provision of the agreements between the Council and the BID Company. We note the provisions in the 2008 and 2013 agreements that you have highlighted.

In terms of monitoring the performance of our Standard Services in the E11 area, I would stress that rigorous contracts are in place across the Council, which set high performance standards for our contractors. The performance of the Standard Services, including highways maintenance and street cleansing services in the E11 area has constantly been to the standards and specifications set out in the relevant contracts.

The Council’s contract managers have met annually with the BID directors since its inception to monitor the progress of street cleansing services, and also have held informal dialogue throughout the year where any potential issues around performance can be raised and addressed.

The performance and progress of the BID was followed closely throughout this time by both the levy payers – to whom the E11 BID Company is directly accountable – and the Council, through progress meetings and on-going correspondence.

I would just also reiterate that the E11 BID Company is directly accountable to levy payers and not accountable via the local authority.

We are in ongoing discussions with the E11 BID regarding any further documentation or actions that are required on this matter and are content that performance reporting arrangements have been satisfactory during this time’.

So there you have it. When questioned in detail under the Freedom of Information Act, LBWF is forced to admit that, bar one early instance, it cannot show that any reporting and monitoring as required in its contracts with the E11 Bid Co. has occurred.

But when the freshly arrived Ms. Shomali is put on the spot about the same issue, she tells us not to worry, because she knows different – that monitoring and reporting have occurred, and moreover the results are very positive.

Who to believe?

All that can be said at this stage is that the truth will no doubt eventually out.

Word reaches me from a number of sources that Waltham Forest Labour’s woes continue.

The longstanding subterranean infighting between factions continues, as does the jockeying for position to succeed the Leader, Cllr. Robbins. But in addition, the party is now swamped by new members, few of whom have much idea about, or interest in, its traditional ways of doing things, and some of whom seem intent on a purge.

Reactions to this influx vary. On the surface, there is obeisance to the mantra that ‘Jeremy has galvanized a new politics’. But in private, the feeling is one of doom and gloom. Some long-time members are dismayed by the thought of having to embrace old enemies on the Trotskyite, Stalinist and Green fringes. Robbins himself is urgently contacting those he has previously fallen out with in a desperate bid to mend fences. One or two others have already jumped ship to the Corbynistas.

Meanwhile, the shock waves are also enveloping our two local Labour MPs. The Evening Standard recently ran a story about Stella Creasy headlined ‘Left-wingers bid to seize power in east London seat of Labour star’. As for John Cryer, his trade union links may make his position seem reasonably impregnable, yet it is undeniable that even here the cracks are beginning to show. Members grumble about Cryer’s lack of local profile, his circumscribed interests, and his moonlight flit to live outside the borough. Other issues lurk in the background. As students of the French Revolution know, once unleashed, the mob will be unpredictable and capricious.

Against this background, it is interesting to find that Cllr. Shabana Dhedi has agreed to speak at a public meeting in Walthamstow showcasing the new shadow-chancellor, John McDonnell – he of Workers Revolutionary Party sympathies and ‘disarm the police’ fame.

Quite what this development means is as yet unclear. But given that Cllr. Dhedi is known to be close to Cllr. Robbins, is this a sign of the latter hedging his bets?

Some significant new evidence has just emerged about North London Ltd. (NLL), the company which featured local property developer Michael Polledri as a director, and operated for most of its life from his base at Heron Wharf.

In general terms, NLL is of interest for two very good reasons. First, Mr. Polledri is no ordinary Joe, but something of a Waltham Forest colossus – MBE; chair of the Waltham Forest Business Board; trusted Council advisor; Labour supporter; quangocrate; philanthropist; director of a whole host of different companies (no less than 35, until recently); and all round booster of Waltham Forest. When his name is mentioned, in other words, people rightly sit up and take notice.

Second, NLL itself continues to intrigue. For here is a private company that was paid hundreds of thousand of pounds by public authorities (including LBWF); handed its directors generous emollients (a whacking £314,897 in the three year period 2004-07 alone); but left an unexpectedly faint footprint in terms of recorded outputs and accomplishments. Indeed, up to now, in truth, it has been difficult to fathom exactly why NLL existed at all.

The new evidence cuts through some of the murkiness. We have established previously that NLL operated an EU-financed programme called ‘Exporting Success’, which (a) was supervised and administered by the Greater London Authority (GLA); (b) ran from 2009 to 2012; (c) was worth £687,101; and (d) aimed to offer ‘advice, guidance and hands-on support to business owners considering exporting or looking to explore new markets abroad’. What has now been divulged under the Freedom of Information Act is the output data from the programme, and this can be summarised as follows:

Put bluntly, NLL missed all of its targets, most of them spectacularly. In fact, in terms of business and job outputs, NLL produced only two-fifths of the total it was contracted to provide, in terms of ‘value of increase in economic performance’, a mere 15 per cent.

How could such a lamentable outcome have occurred? The official story, as far as I can gather, is as follows. Between September 2009 and June 2012, ‘Exporting Success’ ran uncontroversially, and the GLA settled NLL’s claims at regular intervals, in all forwarding 12 sums totaling £591,500. It appears that such payments occurred regardless of output figures, in the belief that any shortfalls would be made good as the programme moved to conclusion.

However, unforeseen events then intervened. For after examining NLL’s final claim, the GLA became concerned about ‘the evidence that had been provided in support of outputs and results’, and so determined to investigate further. But while this was happening, in August 2012, the GLA was informed ‘by a consultant engaged by NLL’ that the company was folding, a fact that was confirmed in March of the following year by the appointed liquidator, Leonard Curtis. Subsequently, the GLA convened a committee to examine what could be done, and this agreed to seek the return of £101,822 as a penalty recompense for the ‘significant’ underachievement. As of today, the situation is at deadlock, with Leonard Curtis arguing that the £101,822 is not a ‘true debt’, and talks ongoing between the GLA and the Department of Communities and Local Government as to how to respond. I am advised that the likely outcome is a write off.

Quite clearly, this chain of events does not reflect well on anyone involved. When questioned, the GLA tells me in mitigation that it is one of the few authorities in the country that operates a claw back policy. However, such an observation largely misses the point. The fact is that the GLA apparently handed over large sums of money – one payment to NLL was in six figures – without requiring matching evidence of outputs. Moreover, the sum that the GLA is now attempting to reclaim seems based upon an arbitrary formula, and is certainly much less that the value of the overall underachievement, as unambiguously indicated by the numbers already presented.

As for NLL, in my view it too deserves censure. The NLL directors had previously enjoyed some handsome rewards, and their duty anyhow was to ensure that agreed targets were hit. If they could not deliver, they should have openly admitted as much and then returned the sums that the GLA had already paid over. The fact that the public purse will probably end up short of £101,822 does them little credit.

My inquiries into this fiasco continue, so further updates will appear in due course.

POSTSCRIPT

As of today (26 November 2015), Companies House continues to list NLL as ‘active’, though noting that both its 2012-13 accounts, due on 31 December 2013, and its 2014 Annual Return, due 11 February 2014, still have not been delivered. The plot thickens.

As a previous post has indicated, there are serious questions to be asked about Waltham Forest’s attempts to confront local Islamist extremists. The record over the past decade has been at best mixed, and includes some embarrassing failures. The fact that LBWF will not discuss its current Prevent programme in any detail only adds to the sense that someone, somewhere is afraid of further revelations. LBWF Chief Executive Martin Esom may think of himself as an expert in this area, and chair the London Prevent Board, but whether the local authority as a whole is fulfilling its responsibilities remains unclear.

Two recent events increase anxieties. First, a Channel Four investigation reveals that, over the past two or three years, ISIS sympathisers have been using the Waltham Forest Community Hub (until recently, the ‘Asian Centre’) in Walthamstow for weekly meetings. The Hub is council owned and funded. It is a reasonable expectation that its hirings policy should conform to council guidelines. Of course, it is sometimes difficult to identify groups who wish to keep their identity secret. But (a) we are not talking about a one off event, rather something that has been going on for a long time; and (b) given the present dangers, a proof positive policy should have been in place. The blunt fact is that this hiring should not have happened.

Such a conclusion is amplified because it turns out that there was an almost identical episode at the same place nine years ago. The Guardian report is here:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/aug/16/topstories3.terrorism

Subsequently, LBWF put in place some safeguards, and enrolled named councillors to keep a watching brief. Recent Community Hub annual reports suggest that those fulfilling this role have included the following:

Quite clearly, both these individuals, and the LBWF leadership, now have some explaining to do.

The second event is equally worrying. I understand that after the recent Paris murders, LBWF called together a number of the supposed key players to discuss the local ramifications. Almost the entire meeting focused on the possibility of an anti-Muslim backlash, and the underreporting of associated hate crime. The question of how better to confront local extremists was largely ignored.

Now if this is correct – and my source is reliable – it again puts the borough in a very bad light. Hate crimes are abhorrent. Perpetrators should be vigorously prosecuted. But at this time, Islamist extremists represent the biggest threat, to Muslim and non-Muslim residents alike. And that should have been the priority item at the meeting.

As always with LBWF, one is left bemused. There is a degree of preening about expertise, the supposed council pre-eminence at Prevent. The Muslim block of councillors (so well identified by the Institute of Community Cohesion) is clearly intent on its own agenda. Groups like the laughably named Islamic Human Rights Commission are taken seriously. A common thread running throughout is a lack of transparency and accountability. It is as if there is a tacit agreement that residents as a whole are not to be trusted, with the majority of the population written off as quasi-racists or infants.

And meanwhile ISIS sympathisers are permitted to meet regularly on council property right under our elected representatives’ noses.

I have written before about Cllr. Johar Khan, noting in particular his puzzling relationship with the by now notorious E11 BID Co..

This afternoon, the Waltham Forest Guardian reports ‘A Labour Party spokesman’ as saying: ‘“We can confirm Cllr Khan has been suspended pending the result of an investigation.”’

Coincidentally, in the last few days, I have received an anonymous letter about Cllr. Khan, which also alleges that the local Labour Party is involved in a cover up.

I am aware that Cllr. Khan has some political enemies, for instance those who have not forgiven him for his role in the implosion of the local Liberal Party.

It will be interesting to see what now transpires, and whether my correspondent is proved correct.

‘I would like to take this opportunity to thank the headteacher, Ludiya Besisira and her staff for all their hard work in improving the school and attaining an excellent Ofsted report’ (Cllr. Chris Robbins, portfolio holder, to LBWF Cabinet, October 2008)

In October 2015, the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) published its adjudication on allegations made against Ms. Ludiya Besisira, headteacher at Mission Grove Primary School in Walthamstow from 2001 to 2010 (NCTL, Ludiya Besisira: Professional conduct panel outcome (October 2015)).

It does not make pleasant reading.

The NCTL finds against Ms. Besisira on twelve separate counts, many of them serious, establishing that – inter alia – she paid herself £135,700 over and above her statutory pay; claimed overtime for which there was no provision in her contract; entered into a leasing agreement with a third party though such agreements were explicitly forbidden by the school’s financial regulations; authorised an overpayment to a third party of £50,000; misled LBWF regarding the financial status of her school, and thereby ‘knowingly deprived the borough of funds to which it was entitled’; and behaved ‘in a bullying and intimidating manner’ to staff. In short, the NCTL concludes, ‘Ms. Besisira acted dishonestly for the purposes of financial gain’.

How can this have happened? The following is a summary of what we currently know.

We look first, naturally, at Ms. Besisira herself. As the NCTL report suggests, she had a forceful personality, self-confidence, and an autocratic style. Witnesses are quoted remembering that ‘“you had to do what she said. If you argued with her it would be like arguing with a brick wall”’ and “The way that the school’s finance [sic] work is that Ludiya controlled everything”’. In addition, the NCTL report notes the important detail that Ms. Besisira was fluent in money matters, having worked at Coopers and Lybrand, and several other similar organisations.

Finally, it is apparent that Ms. Besisira was assiduous in currying support from the great and good, something that the local blog Archipelago of Truth had fun with in 2010, for which see here:

http://archipelago-of-truth.blog.co.uk/2010/01/14/mission-grove-headteacher-faces-investigation-7757092/

Next up is ‘Individual D’, who became chair of the Mission Grove governors in 2005. The NCTL report characterises him as someone who devoted ‘substantial amounts of his personal time to his role’, but had ‘wholly inadequate’ knowledge of the financial framework within which the school was supposed to operate, including specifically ‘the basis on which Ms Besisira should be remunerated’. Against this background, the NCTL report concludes, ‘Individual D’ was greatly influenced by Ms. Besisira, and ‘effectively “did her bidding”’. One example captures the relationship: ‘Letters were regularly drafted by Ms Besisira and placed before Individual D for his signature without him having any real understanding or knowledge of what he was signing…this included the letters that were drafted by Ms Besisira which authorised the increases to her salary’.

So much for the individuals, what about the oversight authorities? The obvious starting point is Ofsted which of course had significant general responsibilities. It turns out that Ofsted inspected Mission Grove twice during the relevant period, first in 2005 and then in 2008. And it further turns out that on both occasions Ofsted judged the school to be outstanding, and not just in terms of its teaching and learning, but also in terms of its administration. Ms. Besisira provided ‘excellent leadership’, the senior staff were ‘highly effective’, and overall ‘a strong sense of team spirit’ contributed to the success of the school. The governors, too, were praised, with the 2005 report calling them ‘effective’, and noting there was ‘a core of very good governors, including the chair and vice-chair’; and its successor judging them ‘astutely led’ and sensitive to ‘what is needed to improve the school’. The inescapable conclusion, then, is that, to put it kindly, the Ofsted inspections drastically misread important aspects of what was happening at Mission Grove, and by doing so allowed them to persist.

Did those with regulatory responsibility at a local level do any better? Unfortunately, the blunt answer is no. For although LBWF and its partner EduAction (the joint venture formed by Amey Plc and Nord Anglia Education to run the borough’s schools in the 2000s) oversaw virtually every aspects of day-to-day administration across the local sector during this period, and employed various well paid managers to implement their policies, neither organisation apparently detected that anything at all was going wrong at Mission Grove until December 2009, eight years after Ms. Besisira’s appointment.

The final player in this dismal story is unexpected. The NCTL report reveals that, contrary to the school’s regulations, Ms. Besisira entered into a leasing agreement for eight photocopiers in 2006, which was worth a total of £213,041. This in itself is fairly startling. But more surprising still is the fact that the finance was brokered by no less than BNP Paribas, the self-styled ‘bank for changing the world’.

Exactly who first suggested this arrangement, and to what end, is unclear. The leasing agreement provided for standard quarterly payments of £17,390. However, in April and June 2009 Ms. Besisira paid over much larger sums, no less than £51,600 and £57,500 respectively. She later maintained that ‘she had an agreement from BNP Paribas that any payments over and above the quarterly payments would reduce the overall money owing to them’, something that the bank has subsequently disputed. The NCTL report conjectures that the real objective of the agreement was to park assets so as to avoid claw back, at the time liable on any excess in an individual school’s budget over 8 per cent. Whatever the case, this episode remains deeply puzzling.

So much for the facts. What will happen now? The Waltham Forest Guardian reports that after being contacted by LBWF in January 2010, the police launched an investigation, which is still ongoing today. Why no firm conclusion has been reached after nearly six years worth of effort remains a mystery.

But leaving aside the specific matter of possible criminality, it is to be hoped that a final reckoning will encompass the several other individuals and institutions that figure in the story.

Amongst the questions that need to be answered are the following:

Did Ms. Besisira act alone or in concert?

Why did both LBWF and EduAction so spectacularly fail to identify her dishonesty and disregard of regulations?

What did Cllr. Chris Robbins, then portfolio holder, now Leader of the Council, know of this unhappy episode?

Why did the Ofsted inspectors twice overlook what was so obviously going on under their noses?

How and why did BNP Paribas become involved, and was the bank doing similar questionable business with other Waltham Forest schools?

Put in a nutshell: we spend a good deal of public money to prevent dishonest and fraudulent behavior; in this case every safeguard failed for a period of eight years; and we urgently need to know why.

UPDATE

The Daily Mail online carried the following on 28 November 2015:

‘A cheating head teacher enjoyed a two-year trip to Nepal partly funded by the foreign aid budget, while under investigation in Britain.

Ludiya Besisira fooled Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) into making her an all-expenses-paid ‘education ambassador’.

She had quit her primary school in London after ‘dishonestly’ doubling her salary to £97,000, a probe heard.

She was also said to have wrongly claimed £300-an-hour overtime, to have bullied staff, employed an illegal worker and to have made unauthorised payments. But a year later she was flown by VSO, which is partly paid for by the Department for International Development, to the tourist spot of Kaski in the Himalayas, posting photos of herself online enjoying the sights while pupils missed out in the financial mess she had left behind.

Officials at VSO had offered herthe overseas role without discovering Basisira was being investigated over her reign at Mission Grove Community Primary School in Walthamstow.

She appeared in VSO publicity to promote volunteering abroad, saying her stint had been a ‘memorable experience’ but her profile on the charity’s website was deleted after Besisira, 64, was banned from teaching for life last month.

Alan Meyrick, on behalf of Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, said a teacher misconduct hearing found a pattern of dishonesty over ‘large sums of money for her own personal gain’, with rises signed off by a governors’ chairman who ‘did her bidding’. She denied all the allegations.

Jaki Walker, VSO’s head of resourcing, said its recruitment process was now more rigorous.

Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: ‘VSO does some great work in developing countries but clearly needs to tighten up its vetting procedures’.

UPDATE TWO

I should also point out that Ms. Besisira has the right to appeal the NCTL decision.

From Private Eye, no.1407, 11 -18 December 2015:

From Private Eye, no. 1408, 19 December 2015 – 7 January 2016:

Despite LBWF insisting that its Prevent programme should in general remain secret, it has recently divulged to me a nine-page ‘Preventing Extremism Strategic Summary’ for 2015-16, and this makes for interesting (if, as will be seen, ultimately dispiriting) reading.

The document begins with some scattered remarks about the challenge to be faced. The current evidence, it states, ‘indicates that the most significant threat relates to Islamist extremism which looks to further the Al-Qaida…narrative’. However, it also warns that ‘The profile of radicalized individuals in Britain that go on to commit acts of violence has changed’, and there appear to be ‘an increasing number of lone actors that have no connection to proscribed groups and who self-organise.’

The following section speculates as to the causes of radicalisation and extremism – in council-speak, what makes individuals ‘vulnerable’. Here, the central argument is that that ‘there are many potential causes’. Indeed, the discussion ranges from ‘alienation’; through psychological need, youthful resentments, intergenerational mis-communication, exclusion and victimisation; to ‘wider economic and social factors’ such as unemployment; and finally  ‘political issues’, for example ‘military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan’, ‘perceived western inaction in Palestine’, ‘recent disputes in North Africa’, and ‘the belief that western states fail to respect or understand Islam’.

Last, the document looks at how to combat extremism, and suggests a number of key principles. The ‘vulnerable’ need to be ‘safeguarded’ from those who would exploit them. This, in turn, demands that agencies work in a multi-faceted and integrated way, ‘responding to the needs of our communities as well as those of policy makers’. Finally, interventions must be both ‘proactive/preventive’ and ‘reactive/disruptive’, meaning in practical terms that Prevent has necessarily to encompass everything from ‘Giving an open and regular platform to community groups to help explain their grievances’ all the way though to enforcement activity and arrests.

What should we make of all this? It does not help that the Strategic Summary seems to have been composed in a rush (perhaps in advance of an official gathering or visit, as happened with the Gang Prevention Programme); is disfigured by jargon; and on occasion seems vague or muddled. Nor is the evidence underpinning the document exactly impressive. Indeed, the only source acknowledged is ‘a series of work programmes’ which took place as long ago as  2011/12 and ‘drew on the views and experiences of a large number of Muslim residents’. Moreover, it is disappointing to find anyone in authority regurgitating the lone-wolf thesis, since Jason Burke, amongst others, has comprehensively demolished any such notion, pointing out that ‘lone wolves are not really lone but embedded within a much wider and deeper culture of Islamic militancy’ (Jason Burke, The New Threat (2015), p.21).

However, it is two matters that the Strategic Summary leaves out which appear most puzzling. First, there is no mention at all of the local mosques and the varieties of Islam that are practiced therein. The implication is that they have little relevance to the issue at hand. Yet this is by no means obvious.

It should be clearly stated from the start that support in Waltham Forest for strident Islamism seems to be confined to the fringes. The clownish activities of Anjem Choudary, needless to say, have attracted considerable press attention, as have the efforts of those who allegedly want to create ‘sharia law zones’. That said, the mainstream unarguably remains unimpressed. Indeed, several local mosques have made denunciations of terrorism that are both forthright and comprehensive.

Nevertheless, this is not the end of the story.  For combating extremism must necessarily mean confronting the ‘narratives’ that can give it succor – the conspiracy theories about ‘the West’ and ‘the Jews’; the  partisan history of the ‘Muslim lands’; the prejudices concerning the ‘kuffar’; the open hostility towards apostates, atheists, feminists and gays; the religious sectarianism; the claims to victimhood; and so on. The question that needs to be asked, then, is whether the local record here is equally as positive.

Discovering what is taught and discussed in local mosques is far from easy. One example is illustrative. The Waltham Forest Council of Mosques (WFCOM) has recently attracted public attention by its strong opposition to bombing ISIS in Syria, and denunciation of Prevent because ‘It is racist, and overtly targets members of the Muslim faith’. What makes these statements especially significant, according to the Guardian, is the fact that WFCOM ‘represents up to 70,000 Muslims’. However, if the organisation’s own website is consulted, the interested inquirer finds nothing to substantiate this specific claim, nor indeed much about anything else. There are pictures of leading personalities, including some who either have made appearances on this blog (Cllr. Johar Khan, and ex-Cllr. Afzal Akram) or are well known luminaries of the local hard Left (ex-MP Neil Gerrard, and Cannon Steven Saxby). There is brief reference to WFCOM’s campaigns against ‘Israeli State terrorism’ and ‘compulsory Sex and Relationship Education’. And there is fleeting reference to the eight mosques that appear to be constituent members. But as to what WFCOM really stands for, how it is constituted, who elects its leadership, or where it gets its money from, there is nothing. The fact that (as of the date of this posting) the website’s buttons for ‘About’, ‘Members’, ‘News & Events’, Media’, and even ‘Contact’, are all dead speaks for itself.

That said, information already in the public domain is certainly enough to give pause for thought. There are 17 mosques in the borough, and of these, seven, with a total capacity of 4,700, adhere to Deobandi Islam, making it the dominant sect (see www. mosquedirectory.co.uk). In general, Deobandi Islam is austere, and conservative, illustrated by the fact that six of the Deobandi mosques are described as catering principally for men. As to teaching, Deobandis tend to have little truck with suicide bombing or the killing of innocents. Nevertheless, the picture that emerges of Deobandi dogma as a whole is hardly reassuring. There is a spectrum of beliefs, certainly. But TV and music are often frowned upon, and women advised not to travel without male escorts. The superiority of Islam is habitually reinforced.  Indeed, in her recent encyclopedic and largely sympathetic study of Islam in Britain, Innes Bowen interviews one moderate imam from London who observes of the Deobandis that from a young age their children are subject to a ‘“subtle demonisation” directed at the wider society’, and adds: ‘“Re-inculcating that humanity concept – to be compassionate to all because God is compassionate – is going to take some time”’ (Innes Bowen, Medina in Birmingham, Najaf in Brent (2014), p.27-8).

Beyond the Deobandis, there are other legitimate grounds for concern. Take the Salafi orientated Al-Tawhid Mosque in Leyton. In 2007, this was investigated by Channel Four’s Dispatches team, and linked to international extremism. A document still available online – ‘Help requested to prevent an extremist takeover of Al-Tawhid Mosque’ – recapitulates much of the evidence. Subsequently, the Charity Commission has first launched an inquiry into the mosque’s governance, and then directly intervened. Meanwhile, a close partner of the mosque, the local Islamic Sharia Council (ISC), has also attracted criticism. In 2013, Panorama went undercover and showed that the ISC’s rulings were ‘not always in the interests of women’ and could ‘run counter to British law’. More recently, it has emerged that one of the ISC’s trustees until 2015 was Haitham al-Haddad, someone perhaps best known for his You Tube outbursts on the subject of homosexuality, his reported opinion that ‘“A man should not be questioned why he hit his wife, because this is something between them”’, and his assertion that ‘there is a big conspiracy around ISIS…what is the agenda behind it?’ (Evening Standard, 19 February, 2014; www.standforpeace.org.uk). There is also the depressing fact that in a forthcoming study, Choosing Sharia?, Dutch academic Machteld Zee concludes that even now the ISC continues much as before (Independent, 4 December 2015).

It is true that responding constructively to this array of attitudes and practices is not straightforward. All UK citizens have an absolute right to both freedom of speech under the law, and freedom of worship; while espousing illiberal views is self-evidently not a crime. There is almost limitless scope for legitimate disagreement about both home and foreign policy. In addition, local authorities do not have free rein, and are anyway increasingly constrained by lack of resources. However, all that said, if LBWF was minded to, it could play a much more effective and beneficial role than is currently the case, for example, by vigorously supporting the case for democracy, law, liberty and tolerance; supporting moderate and progressive voices in the mosques; ensuring that public facilities are never given over to extremist activities; and emphatically distancing itself from those who propagate sectarian or supremacist ideologies. That LBWF is apparently unwilling to even consider such initiatives as possible components of Prevent is concerning.

The second omission in the Strategic Summary is stranger still. It is axiomatic that any attempt to defeat terrorism will only succeed if the populace as a whole is fully in support. Put bluntly, local people are a resource: a moral force, of course, but also a vital channel for the collection and transmission of the kind of intelligence which will directly limit the terrorist’s room for manoevre. Yet, in Waltham Forest, Prevent is conceived of in very different terms, essentially as a matter for the statutory agencies, and the grown ups – in other words, council officers, councillors, ‘community leaders’, consultants, and so on. The rest of us are, by implication, politely requested to sit and watch.

The consequences of such a top down stance are entirely predictable. Shut out from participation in, or even influence over, what is going on, many residents feel increasingly frustrated, even cynical. Thus, a recent Open Society Foundations report on community integration in Waltham Forest, based upon focus groups, finds white working class respondents to be ‘jaundiced’ about politics, and convinced they have ‘neither voice nor influence’ – they see themselves as ‘a forgotten community’. And, interestingly, Muslim respondents are apparently equally disenchanted, critical of local leaders who purport to represent their interests (‘Consistent complaints included the poor quality of political representation on the local community. It was suggested that some Muslim councillors did not have the capacity to advocate and some could not speak English’), and sceptical of  the mosques, which they characterise in terms of ‘a parochial approach to faith and politics, little participation and periodic infighting’ (Open Society Foundations, Building Bridges. London Borough of Waltham Forest (2014), p.43-5). A less propitious starting point from which to construct a united and popular campaign against terrorism is hard to imagine.

The conclusion which emerges from the preceding paragraphs is that the Strategic Summary has obvious flaws, and accordingly is unfit for purpose. For reasons which remain inexplicable, LBWF is considered in some quarters to have expertise in counter-extremism. In fact, as this post and its several predecessors have shown, the reality is very different.

Exactly why LBWF has arrived at its current stance is unclear. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to hypothesise. The Labour administration in the Town Hall has never been keen on public participation, nor is it known for its willingness to engage in political debate. The leadership seems keener on meetings with allegedly key individuals behind closed doors than appearing in forums where it will be challenged. In addition, it appears that the Muslim block of councillors (so well identified by the Institute of Community Cohesion) both retains considerable influence over policy in this area, and is jealous in safeguarding it.

However, the chickens may be about to come home to roost. Prevent is becoming a significant local political issue. LBWF’s determination to keep what it is doing under wraps inevitably – and quite reasonably, it must be said – provokes suspicion and misunderstanding. Those with their own agendas make hay. Unless the Council changes direction, there may be serious trouble ahead.

Private Eye‘s annual Rotten Borough Awards are always a highpoint for local council watchers, and this year LBWF triumphs again, with no less than two citations, which read as follows:

‘COMBATING EXTREMISM: Until an undercover Channel 4 reporter discovered the truth, for two years Labour Waltham Forest council hired out a room for “ladies tea afternoons” to a group of burqa-clad women…who turned out to be an Isis supporters’ group'; and

‘WORKPLACE SAFETY: The London borough of Waltham Forest was fined £66,000 with £16,000 costs for failing to protect staff and public from asbestos on its premises. The council had known about the deadly dust in its basement since 1984 but had done nothing  about it until 2012, despite having been ordered to undertake remedial work by the Health and Safety Executive in 2002′.

(Private Eye no. 1409, 8-21 January 2016)

Trebles all round, as they say!