Waltham Forest Council has accused Whitefield School’s former management of failing to disclose key information about how calming room abuses were documented, reports Marco Marcelline
Whitefield School’s former management kept Waltham Forest Council in the dark about CCTV footage documenting the physical abuse of pupils, the town hall has said.
At least 38 children were documented to have been abused by staff between 2014 and 2017 in window-less padded rooms known as “calming rooms”.
Pupils were left alone in them for up to four hours at a time, some sitting in their own urine and eating crumbs off the floor. Footage, which was only discovered in 2021, also shows children, many of whom were non-verbal, kicked and hit with force.
No-one who worked at the school during the abuse scandal has been charged or prosecuted.
As questions mount over what the council could have done to stop the abuse, the town hall has accused the school’s former management and governing body of “bearing full responsibility for what took place”.
The Echo has seen a copy of the school’s 2016-17 behaviour policy, which explicitly states that all incidents involving the use of calming rooms were recorded, with recordings encrypted and stored on memory sticks.
It adds that such footage would be reviewed at the end of each academic year and wiped unless the head of school and behaviour lead agreed there was good reason to retain a particular recording.
The policy was in place when senior leaders from the council’s education and children’s social care departments visited the school in the wake of a damning Ofsted inspection in January 2017.
According to the recent Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review (LCSPR), council representatives were under the impression that calming room cameras were used as “a real-time observation tool”, with footage not being retained.
The LCSPR further states that the council’s understanding of how CCTV was used “relied largely on information provided by the school”.
And now, the council has painted the picture of a local authority that was knowingly kept in the dark by a school management that withheld the existence of CCTV footage showing pupils being abused by staff.
A town hall spokesperson told the Echo: “School management from that time bears full responsibility for what took place.
“They did not disclose relevant information including the historical behaviour policy when they should have, and school staff did not inform officers about the existence of CCTV footage.”
The spokesperson added: “Local authorities have no automatic powers to approve, inspect, or review policies for academy schools like Whitefield.
“Even if council officers had been informed in 2017 of the existence of CCTV recordings, they would not have been able to demand to view or seize them unless allegations of mistreatment had been formally raised – which they had not.
“The information that there were CCTV recordings came to light in 2021 when footage was discovered on a USB drive by the new school management. The council immediately alerted the police as soon as it was informed.”
The LCSPR does however state that in June 2017, a Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) investigation commenced in response to an allegation of staff abuse against a pupil.
The report says the school’s designated safeguarding lead referred the case to LADO after the school’s headteacher, Elaine Colquhuon had reviewed CCTV of the incident.
LADO then concluded that the school had taken appropriate action in response to the allegation. It is unclear if LADO reviewed the CCTV in this incident; the council was contacted for further comment.
Flourish Learning Trust, which ran the school at the time of the abuse scandal, was not reachable for comment. The school has been run by Learning in Harmony Trust since 2025.
Green councillor for Lea Bridge ward, Liz Biggs shared the behaviour policy document with the Echo, and said she was denied the opportunity to speak about her concerns at an extraordinary meeting held at the town hall about Whitefield School on Tuesday, 20th October.
Explaining her concerns, she said: “It’s hard to ignore the nagging feeling that perhaps if the CCTV recordings of alleged abuse were discovered earlier, criminal charges may have been brought.
“When preparing for this meeting, I discovered this policy document online, which states that CCTV in the ‘calming’ rooms is recorded and kept – yet the council review team in January 2017 seemingly took at face value that the CCTV was live-only.
“What went wrong here? I hope the council will offer me the opportunity to ask my questions in another forum.”
Her concerns about the lack of scrutiny at the meeting were shared by Conservative councillor Catherine Saumarez, who called it a “rubber-stamping” exercise.
She said: “Not one of my questions around accountability and professional consequences was answered; every question was ignored and deflected. We were essentially expected to rubber stamp the [LCSPR] report.
“I cannot look parents in the eye and tell them with confidence that there aren’t people who got away with abusing children still working with the vulnerable in our borough. What are they so worried about that the role of independent scrutiny was completely prevented?”
The council has defended itself against allegations of a “cover-up”, saying: “Baseless ongoing speculation about historical events, all of which have been thoroughly and independently scrutinised by the police and safeguarding specialists, will have a negative impact on a school that is now well run, and which provides vital care and education support for local children with complex needs.”
However, families have raised fresh concerns about the ongoing use of seclusion rooms and injuries sustained by their children at Whitefield School in Walthamstow.
As reported in the November edition of the Echo, one parent’s partially verbal daughter, then aged eleven, was placed in a calming room as recently as September 2025.
And another parent, Melanie Rinaldi, removed her non-verbal autistic son Kristian from Whitefield after he came home with bruises on his left arm on 15th January.
The school explained that Kristian, 16, had briefly bitten himself and staff were unable to stop him quickly enough.
Melanie says she did not believe this explanation, arguing that the injuries were too severe to have been inflicted over a short period of time.
She said: “At the very worst he was harmed, and at the very best he was neglected by staff who, intentionally or not, let him bite himself unattended for a significant period of time. That’s the only way to explain those injuries.”
Read more: Parents allege continued use of seclusion rooms at Whitefield School
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