WE join the Guardian in hoping that the council has finally woken up to the seriousness of the NRF/BNI scandal (‘New BNI probe brings renewed hope – but why stay silent’, 14 May). The incoming chief executive certainly appears to mean business.

But we wonder whether the local political hierarchy is similarly inclined. Two questions for the new leader, Chris Robbins, provide a handy acid test.

Between 2004 and 2008, the council paid EduAction first £340,000 from NRF funds and then £991,000 from BNI funds to run a series of programmes with vague names such as ‘Youth at Risk’ (YAR), ‘Curriculum Development’, and so on. All of these proved highly controversial. An internal audit report concluded of YAR: ‘Officers approved payment of claims despite persistent non-compliance with funding requirements’.

When PricewaterhouseCoopers examined three of the BNI programmes, it found that none had been tendered according to LBWF rules, and there was only very limited evidence of either monitoring or auditing, so that close to a million pounds worth of expenditure could not be linked to any known outputs.

Needless to say, it took a lot of effort to get any of this information into the public realm, since the council’s approach was to ‘manage’ the bad news. And despite police involvement, there is much here that still remains shrouded in mystery.

However, there is one detail that we can be clear about. Over the years, two or three cabinet members had particular responsibility for these EduAction programmes, and one was Chris Robbins.

So our challenge to him is very simple. Please can he state precisely when he first became aware that things were going wrong, and explain exactly what action he took?

Philip Dundon, Cary Road, Leytonstone

Nick Tiratsoo, Odessa Road, Walthamstow