Tower Hamlets condemned
01 March 1993
The local government Ombudsman ordered Tower Hamlets council to pay compensation to three families for its failure to act on racial attacks on the notorious Teviot estate, which Home Office research found to have three times the level of racist attacks as other "problem" estates. The council took no action against perpetrators of attacks even where they were identified, nor did it offer victims of attack the chance to move out, found the Ombudsman, saying that the council "followed neither their own policy nor the basic principles of good administration". The report follows a High Court case in 1992 in which Tower Hamlets was held to have acted unreasonably in failing to recognise the scale of incidents on the estate when compelling homeless Asian families to live there. The chair of the Poplar neighbourhood, where the estate is, said there was no intention of changing the policy of sending Asians to live on the estate.
Observer 21.3.93.