Waltham Forest Council

Point of no return?

To Estelle Morris, who was schools minister when she was first consulted and is now education secretary, the answer is the same as it was for Islington and Hackney, for Leeds, Bradford and Sandwell: privatise. If a local authority is not providing education services efficiently, sprinkle some private-sector gold dust over it. It's a one-size-fits-all prescription.

So Waltham Forest's councillors have spent a fraught year watching the unedifying sight of competing companies scratching each others' eyes out to get the business. Next month they have to decide who gets the contract, and they find themselves with only one choice of company. It is, in many ways, a thoroughly unattractive one.

Local education authorities no longer run schools. They have been stripped of their powers, but they still have responsibilities. They provide services, ranging from special needs teaching to clerks for governing bodies, which schools can buy if they wish. They help and advise schools in trouble, and the best LEAs provide valued support to headteachers in their lonely and stressful work.

By common consent, Waltham Forest has not done this effectively for some years. Ofsted listed five failings, including not doing enough to raise standards in secondary schools, and not giving sufficient help to schools with behaviour problems. Former Ofsted chief Chris Woodhead characteristically went further than his own inspectors: the LEA, he claimed, had a "culture of failure and hopelessness".

The local branch of the public sector trade union Unison, whose members work in the LEA, said: "The au thority's failure to act on schools which have been failing . . . has led to parents voting with their children's feet." There was not enough investment, poor collection of statistics, and above all, rotten communications with staff: "The unspoken message is clear: it does not matter that staff . . . are ill-informed because their opinions don't matter."

As with other councils flayed by Ofsted, education ministers made it clear that they would use their power to take over the authority's functions if the private sector was not called in. In came the management consultants PriceWaterhouseCoopers, whose report said: "The LEA does not currently have the capacity to bring about the required improvement," and offered four possible privatisation models. How much Waltham Forest ratepayers paid for their report is a closely guarded secret, but it was at least £250,000.

So in came a company called PPI, to run the education department on an interim basis until a long-term solution was found. And that's where the ethics of private business started to clash head-on with those of the public sector, and things started to get messy.
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PPI's core business was doing inspections for Ofsted. It was Ofsted's biggest supplier. Its boss and the owner of a third of its shares was John Haslett, an old friend of Chris Woodhead. He led the PPI team in Waltham Forest, becoming the borough's acting deputy chief education officer.

Then PPI was bought by a much bigger company called Tribal, which sells training packages. Tribal joined forces with the security company Group Four in order to bid for major education projects such as Waltham Forest.

Now that his company was big enough to bid for the £15m a year contract, Haslett, as deputy chief education officer, was in the awkward position of helping to award a contract from which he might ultimately benefit. He claimed that a system of "Chinese walls" would prevent any conflict of interest. But Tribal also agreed that, if they got the contract, they would give Haslett a one-off payment of £5,000. Unfortunately for Haslett, this deal was discovered by another bidder, Nord Anglia's Kevin McNeany, who gleefully exposed it. PPI said the offer had been made before the bidding formally began. But that was the end of Tribal's chances.

By then the bidders had been whittled down to two, and with Tribal safely out of the way, Nord Anglia - which put in a joint bid with the construction company Amey - is the only survivor.

Meanwhile councillors considered the options offered by PWC. They wanted to avoid the virtual annihilation suffered by Islington's education authority. They decided that the council would employ the chief education officer, and take policy decisions, and a company would be appointed to look after the borough's schools and employ all the staff responsible for schools.

That's the contract which Nord Anglia and Amey expect to get next month. Yet there are serious reservations in the borough about them. All three trade unions - Unison, the Transport and General Workers' Union and the National Union of Teachers - are to ballot their members on the question of strike action.

The borough's year-long association with private-sector management in the form of PPI is far from happy. Haslett's £5,000 was an embarrassment. And local heads are not impressed. "They have not delivered," says John Cullis, head at Barclay Junior, who has taught in the borough for 32 years. "We have part-time consultants who are not from our patch. We have not been served well this last 12 months. We have not been getting people who will listen, who appreciate what school improvement is about, who understand the job teachers do."

As for Nord Anglia, staff have failed to take a shine to their style. Union leaders say that their understanding of equal opportunities, vital in a borough with a rich ethnic mix, is rudimentary, and point to a celebrated case in Hackney where Nord Anglia was taken to an industrial tribunal by a black staff member. "I asked them what they understood by institutional racism," said TGWU branch secretary Bob Tennant. "They said they had no experience of it. That indicates that they have no understanding of racism."

There is resentment that the profit for Nord Anglia's shareholders will come out of the borough's education budget. John Cullis says: "Our children should have any help that is going. We don't want a lot of part-time consultants on large salaries." What heads need, he says, is a supportive education service. "Heads are isolated and on their own. If they pick up the phone at 7.30pm, they should expect someone to be there for them."

And there is concern about accountability. Once you privatise a service, it ceases to be directly accountable to voters. A company is employed to run a service, and make a profit. Voters cannot expect to control its decisions any more than those made by their local branch of Tesco.

Kevin McNeany's answer is that although local people cannot control the company with their votes, they can control it by using consumer power. If we fail, he says, you won't send your children to our schools. However, no one has yet devised a school admissions system which gives effective parental choice.

The Waltham Forest proposal is to create a management board consisting of teachers, governors, heads and a very few councillors to oversee the operation of the contract. There is an alternative. Over the last year, the council has recruited some experienced educational administrators as caretakers. Why not ask them to carry on, permanently, and make the changes that are needed?

Unions would welcome it. Unison branch secretary Paul Martin says: "The government has built a set of hurdles which LEAs cannot jump over. Teachers say the government loads schools with too much bureaucracy, but that's true 10 times over for LEAs. When an LEA gets into trouble there is no recovery plan. We need to get a competent set of senior managers and support them." But ministers are determined to see the contract going to a private company, and councillors fear that if they don't deliver this, the government will conduct a scorched earth policy on the council's powers.

The party has imposed an administrative "suspension" on Tony Buckley, the leader of Waltham Forest council. It means he cannot hold any public office on behalf of the party.

Waltham Forest is a hung council but Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative members are expected to formalise his removal at an extraordinary meeting on Wednesday. The Labour group has already elected a new leader.

Waltham Forest falls within the east London constituency of the Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, who says it is further proof that Labour is failing to improve public services.
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But Mr Buckley, a veteran councillor, appears reluctant to go without a fight. He has asked the firm of the publicist Max Clifford to conduct a public relations campaign on his behalf.

It is understood that Labour acted against him after he rebuffed informal efforts to ease his departure. The Labour party's general secretary, David Triesman, is said to have asked Mr Buckley to step aside because of his failure to secure desperately needed improvements in the way the east London council is run.

The office of the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, and the independent Improvement and Development Agency (I&DEA) also called on the leader to "consider his position" after damning reports on the council's performance. Last year an audit commission report condemned Waltham Forest as one of the worst authorities in the country.

Officials from Mr Prescott's office were sent to monitor Waltham Forest in January. Three months later an assessment by the I&DEA said Mr Buckley's poor relationship with Simon White, the chief executive, was hindering efforts to improve the council.

A spokesman for the Labour party confirmed Mr Buckley's suspension. "The complaints are that Cllr Buckley has brought the party into disrepute by behaviour that is prejudicial or grossly detrimental to the party," he said. "The general secretary will shortly appoint an investigating officer to look into this complaint and the national executive committee will be asked to assess a full report. The party's first responsibility here is to the people of the borough. The audit commission gave Waltham Forest a poor rating and identified political management as a particular issue for that authority."

Simon Wright, the Labour group secretary in Waltham Forest, called the situation unfortunate. "We hope it is resolved as soon as possible and our first concern is for the recovery of Waltham Forest and to serve the people who elected us."

Mr Buckley said yesterday that any inquiries should go through Mr Clifford's office, through which he hoped to issue a statement today.

Even local Tories believe he has been treated in a heavy-handed fashion. John Moss, chairman of Walthamstow Conservatives, said: "Labour has not run Waltham Forest well for years but what is unprecedented is the severity of the treatment handed out by the Labour party to someone who knew what the problems were and was making an effort to get on top of them, whether or not he was being successful.

Waltham Forest LBC today announced that its chief executive, Simon White, is leaving the authority by mutual consen...

Waltham Forest LBC today announced that its chief executive, Simon White, is leaving the authority by mutual consent.

Since joining in 2000 Simon has helped successfully move the council from recovery into improvement.

Mr White will remain in post until the end of March during which time he will hand over to Jacquie Dean, the council's deputy chief executive who will take over as interim chief executive.

Waltham Forest LBC leader Clyde Loakes said:

'In his years as chief executive, Simon rose to the many professional and personal challenges presented to him and significantly improved the council's performance and management ability. He has built a sound platform on which the council will be able to base its future development of services to meet the needs of the people of Waltham Forest. A measure of his achievement can be demonstrated by the government lead official's comment that 'The council has come a very long way in a very short space of time. I expect the council to deliver its recovery plan with the benefits this will bring to local residents and service users'.'

After more than three years challenging and demanding work as chief executive, Mr White has decided that he wants to move his career in a new direction and has accepted early retirement. He left a legacy which will be of key importance as Waltham Forest's performance and reputation continue to be improved in the years to come.

The leaders of the three main political parties have thanked Simon for his valuable contribution to the Borough. They have wished him well for the future.

Mr White said:

'Waltham Forest is no longer the poor authority it was 18 months ago. I have every confidence that this will be recognised in our Performance Assessment this year. I am proud of my part in making this transformation which took place in particularly difficult circumstances. The new political leadership of the council has enabled the rate of improvement to accelerate and I am sure that Waltham Forest will achieve its ultimate objective of becoming an excellent authority.'

Jacquie Dean joined the council from the Audit Commission in October 2003 where she was an associate director. Previously she was assistant chief executive at Cardiff Council.

Mr Loakes added:

'It's business as usual. We will continue to focus on improving services. In Jacquie we have an able deputy chief executive who will ensure continuity in our improvement programme and all of our services. This is a very important year for the council and Jacquie will continue to build on our recent achievements.'