Last year’s collapse of longstanding Wanstead law firm Wiseman Lee following its takeover by a large law group has featured on BBC One’s Morning Live (with photos by Wansteadium). Clients who were left out of pocket are still waiting refunds or compensation. To watch the item, click here – it begins at 3mins 20secs.
The 2024 Wanstead Fringe is taking place in September again for three weeks starting on Saturday 7th Sept and concluding on Saturday 28th.
The annual cultural festival includes music, theatre, comedy, film, authors, food & drink, the Jumble Trail and more. This year will be its 11th year and organisers are expecting even more events to take place than last year’s total of 130.
Some key dates are: the Duke Street party on Saturday 7th, the Open Air Kinema on Saturday 14th, the Wanstead Festival on Sunday 15th, and the Jumble Trail on Saturday 21st. Other events will be unveiled soon.
Fringe organisers are, however, seeking 73 volunteers to join the Fringe effort, in a wide variety of roles including publicity, customer service, administration, stewarding, fundraising, and also people who want to be involved specifically in the theatre, cinema and book festival events.
More details and a form for volunteers to complete is available at the Fringe website here. wansteadfringe.org
As in previous general elections we’ll share any candidate literature we receive. If you receive some before us, please feel free to photograph it (scanning in Apple Notes on an iPhone is particularly effective) and send it to info@wansteadium.com.
Like an elephant graveyard, a dustbag of half-dead vacuum cleaners assembled on Nutter Lane on Wednesday morning. By the afternoon they had gone their separate ways.
There are eight candidates standing in Leyton and Wanstead at the General Election on 4 July. John Cryer, MP since 2010, is not seeking re-election. In 2019 he had a majority of 20,808.
The candidates are (in alphabetical order as they will appear on the ballot paper):
 | Workers Party of Britain | Mahtab Aziz |
 | Labour | Calvin Bailey |
 | Rejoin EU | Simon Bezer |
 | Liberal Democrat | Tara Copeland |
 | Conservative | Gloria Croxall |
 | Independent | Shanell Johnson |
 | Green | Charlotte Lafferty |
 | Reform UK | David Sandground |
The candidates have been invited to a hustings at the Churchill Room at Wanstead Library on 24 June, organised by East London Humanists. More details of that event are here:
As expected the major development on the Evergreen Field on Wanstead High Street was approved by Redbridge councillors on Wednesday.
It will mean a block of 24 flats and a children’s day nursery being built on the site, along with a landscaped park and lake to adjoin Christchurch Green. It could also mean an end to the uncertainty which has surrounded the site for decades.
Though the news was welcomed by some, the Wanstead Society was among those regretting it.
Chair Scott Wilding said: “Our view is this is a sad loss of an opportunity to save a piece of land that is classed as Metropolitan Open Land, gives the high street a view of the historic Christ Church Spire – which will now be lost – and could have been saved by the Council for public use as part of the park.
“Of course, there are those who will – rightly – say we need more homes. But the design of the building doesn’t lend itself to a conservation area. It’s a missed opportunity and a decision that can’t be reversed once taken.”
