Tower Hamlets condemned (1)
01 January 1991
Tower Hamlets condemned
artdoc May=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.
Statewatch vol 3 no 2 March-April 1993