Waltham Forest’s first ever Green cabinet will meet next week reports Sebastian Mann, Local Democracy Reporter
Waltham Forest Council’s first Green cabinet will meet next week to approve renewed childcare schemes and housing repair programmes.
It will be the first official meeting of the new administration, which wrestled control of the town hall from Labour in the recent local elections.
The cabinet is made up of senior councillors, including the new leader Paul Perkins and deputy leader Eva Tabbasam, who also serves as the cabinet member responsible for housing.
Their first meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, 2nd June, will cover four policies, which were all in development under the previous Labour leadership.
Councillor Martin Edobar, the new cabinet member for health, and Councillor Daisy Richards, for children and young people, will present a report on recommissioning the Healthy Child Programme.
The new scheme will improve early intervention, it says, by boosting support for fathers, widening an infant feeding support service across the borough, and bolstering help for home-schooled children.
“High levels of child poverty, overcrowding, and temporary accommodation, alongside growing numbers of children with SEND and families experiencing multiple disadvantages, require more intensive and skilled support,” the report states.
Waltham Forest will also renew its leadership of a regional foster care service, which also covers Havering, Redbridge, and Tower Hamlets, as part of a national initiative by the Department for Education to tackle the declining number of foster carers.
Green councillors are additionally set to approve new planning guidelines on how residents and small-scale developers can make alterations to their homes to improve sustainability and “enhance local character”.
Retrofitting the existing housing stock is “key in tackling the climate emergency by reducing carbon emissions, limiting global heating and reaching net zero,” a separate report says.
It has been put forward alongside plans to reprocure a 15-year mechanical repairs contract, at a total cost of £90million, and a £156m general repairs contract covering the next 16 years.
Reports put before the cabinet, which officially determine policy, are typically written by senior council officers and not elected members.
They are all supposed to go before cross-party scrutiny committees ahead of time, but some require further approval at a full council meeting.
The Greens’ shock victory at the polls marks the first time in 16 years Labour has not held a majority in the chamber, after the party won majority control in 2010. None of the new cabinet has ever held an elected position in Waltham Forest before.
Many former Labour cabinet members – such as the member for finance Paul Douglas and social care lead Louise Mitchell – lost their seats to the Zack Polanski-led party.
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