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LBWF councillors: what do they do, and is it value for money? An update.
In essence, the relationship between residents and councillors is an informal contract. Residents agree to pay councillors from the public purse For their part, councillors, amongst other things,...
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Walthamstow resident and community activist Charlie Edwards dismantles LBWF’s...
In the past, this blog has been somewhat sceptical about LBWF’s Mini-Holland and associated ‘active travel’ interventions, primarily because when the bombast was stripped away, careful investigation...
View ArticleThe Town Hall asbestos investigation led by LBWF Director of Governance and...
Director of Governance and Law Mark Hynes’ investigation into my apprehension that, from 2015 to 2021, LBWF may not have managed the large amounts of asbestos that riddled the Town Hall in line with...
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Leyton and Wanstead MP John Cryer calls out Labour anti-semitism again…but...
More fun and games in the local Labour Party, so often the home of the gutter. A couple of weeks ago, John Cryer, M.P. for Leyton and Wanstead and Chair of the Parliamentary Party, took to Twitter and...
View ArticleExplainer: the current Waltham Forest Town Hall asbestos scandal in ten...
1. In 2022, I discovered that a specialist firm, commissioned on behalf of LBWF, had surveyed the Town Hall two years previously, and found that asbestos was present throughout but especially in the...
View ArticleA local resident writes in about LBWF ‘traffic calming measures’ that do the...
The post that follows, contributed by a local resident, describes how badly thought-out traffic calming schemes in Waltham Forest are producing damaging consequences. It is a valuable case study in...
View ArticleWho’d have guessed it? A senior policeman talks nonsense about hate crime at...
A previous post (see link below) expressed disquiet about the fact that both LBWF and the local Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) have been pursuing hate crime in the borough as a priority, even...
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Has LBWF come clean about Town Hall asbestos to its employees, as the law...
As Director of Governance and Law Mark Hynes’ asbestos management investigation limps into its seventh month, so far without any tangible findings, it becomes ever more obvious that one of the major...
View ArticleLBWF’s ‘traffic calming’ measures again in the dock: an expert paramedic...
In a previous guest post (see links, below), a local resident examined the ‘traffic calming’ measures which LBWF is installing across the borough, and pointed out that they have a severe impact of...
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NPS London Ltd. (now re-named Evolve Norse Ltd.) has advised LBWF on managing...
One organisation that sometimes pops up on the margins of public discussion about how LBWF has managed asbestos in the past few years is NPS London Ltd., recently renamed Evolve Norse Ltd. (so...
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Town Hall asbestos: now LBWF can’t produce the mandatory health and safety...
In the period 2015-20, LBWF ostensibly managed Town Hall asbestos on the basis of a 101-page manual, ‘Asbestos Management Procedure For Main Building Walthamstow Town Hall Complex’, jointly produced...
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Local faith in the police plummets to levels lower than elsewhere in London....
It is a striking, though often overlooked fact, that Waltham Forest residents’ trust and confidence in the police has not only declined markedly over recent years, but is also comparatively less...
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LBWF spends millions of public money on cycling, but cannot say whether...
In the past few years, LBWF has spent upwards of c. £30m. on cycling infrastructure, while preaching the virtues of cycling at every opportunity. Indeed, cycling has become an integral part of the...
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Some councillors seem to have been put on earth purely to entertain us. But...
In a recent Waltham Forest Echo story, Local Democracy Reporter Josh Mellor reports that one of Waltham Forest’s finest, Cllr. Alistair Strathern, is standing for Labour in the eagerly awaited Mid...
View ArticleMr. Hynes asbestos inquiry report is still awaited, though promised for June,...
In various statements made from the end of 2022 onwards, LBWF Director of Governance and Law, Mark Hynes, reiterated that he aimed to complete the report of his asbestos investigation by June 2023. In...
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Local Democracy Reporter Josh Mellor exposes the botched refurbishment of...
Local Democracy Reporter Josh Mellor has just published a terrific story in the Waltham Forest Echo about the botched refurbishment of LBWF’s John Walsh and Fred Wigg towers in Leytonstone, which has...
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The new Office of Local Government launches a tool to compare how councils...
The newly formed Office of Local Government (Oflog) has just launched a tool which shows how English councils are performing in terms of both their near neighbours and the national median. So far, the...
View ArticleDeparting CEO Martin Esom given freedom of the borough, though he was five...
At the council meeting last week, departing CEO Martin Esom was granted the freedom of the borough. At first sight, many will conclude that he deserves such recognition, having guided the council for...
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LBWF Director of Governance and Law Mark Hynes releases his asbestos report...
In September 2022, I asked the council’s Director of Governance and Law, Mark Hynes, to confirm that, in the period 2015-20, LBWF had managed asbestos in the Town Hall as required by the key piece of...
View ArticleTraffic calming measures that are harming houses and people: a local resident...
A previous post focused on a local resident’s concern that badly thought-out traffic calming measures in Waltham Forest are producing damaging consequences (see link, below). More recently, the same...
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