After Labour pandered to the Bengalis for years and years, Aspire kicked them up the arse in 2022 and took control of LBTH. Every single Aspire councillor is of Bengali origin. Under the leadership of Mayor Luftur Rahman - yes, he of the vote rigging scandal.

The electors in LBTH know whet they are doing.

3pm on Saturday afternoon - after an #LBTH election which closed at 10pm on Thursday evening. @TowerHamletsNow WHY do I have to go to the BBC “live results” to find you have only managed to declare 4 councillors so far!!! bbc.co.uk/news/election/2026…

Early (for LBTH...) results showing Aspire may be heading for a council majority to follow their holding of the Mayoralty by Lutfur Rahman

Just missing that there is another player and that's Aspire - who have run LBTH since 2022.

He was barred until 2020. In 2022, Aspire took LBTH. They still run it. Have a look at what @LNallalingham has dug up. Aspana Begum Labour £90k salary. Leapfrogged a 20k waiting list for a council flat. Accused hubs of DV, not guilty in court. He WAS the head of housing🤦‍♀️

Rahman was barred from politics for 5 years for his involvement in vote rigging. GG Labour pandered to him. Then he kicked him up the rear. When Rahman was allowed to, he created Aspire Party, who now run LBTH council. Last count: 23 councillors. All Bangladeshi origin. 2 Female

Good job her abusive (not guilty) then husband was head of housing at LBTH at the time too!

Just left #LBTH and post concert wind down is listening to @jeffdantzlertv and @djohnstonuga call @BaseballUGA in the 11th. Great concert - more later but congratulations to @T_Stines on a great evening! #GoDawgs

My former boss at LBTH was a social work manager and also a part time magistrate. She was also a full time fraudster and the High Court made an order for repayment of around a million quid. That was 2007. Nothing has changed.

Your point is about London as a whole. The claim being discussed was specifically Tower Hamlets (LBTH). Those are different units. Tower Hamlets recorded roughly 944 sexual offences in 2023–24 and ranks around 5th among London boroughs by count. If someone claims LBTH is safer than a political rally, the relevant data is borough-level crime, not London’s overall rate compared with England and Wales. You’ve actually disproved her point, not defended it. If London is so safe by your metric, then a Reform rally in London is also safe, which makes her comment nonsense. What I have zero tolerance for is people using sexual offences as a casual punchline to smear political opponents. Pretending that being near people with the wrong opinions is somehow worse than being near actual sex offenders is morally warped and cheapens offences that already suffer from under-reporting, weak enforcement, and poor justice outcomes.

Classic LBTH.

Used the all four regularly when I worked at the LBTH in Yeo street depot. Ancient Britain was my favourite out of the four at least 50 odd Council workers in there every Friday afternoon 🍻🍻😜😂

Thanks for this. As a resident of LBTH I am delighted this crimal is off the streets. Many more out there sadly x

It’s been going on for decades . The true amount lost through fraud and corruption will most likely be more than some countries’ GDP. I gave evidence in the High Court 19 years ago about my thieving LBTH employee direct manager. I have no reason to think that the thieving hasn’t risen exponentially as more criminals get employed into these sectors and ringfenced as untouchable. My former boss, social work manager, part time magistrate and big in Ken Livingstone’s circle, and who lived in Brent funnily enough, was supposed to repay a million quid. I don’t know if that happened. When she was still employed she would dismiss any scrutiny of her as racist in order to continue ripping off the council for as long as she could. The whole thing was rotten as hell with people who had not come through the system through our normal channels, being given accommodation for asylum seekers, this accommodation provided by a company owned by her and her cousin . I still believe there was an element of people trafficking involved but the police weren’t interested, hence the High Court. Now these charlatans are getting government contracts.

Protecting an important UK industry from Tower Hamlets Councils mis-use of tax money The pharmaceutical research industry is one of our most important national industries that generates jobs, taxes and most importantly the drugs that keep us healthy and alive. Whitechapel has important research centre already with the Queen Mary research facilities and under constuction in Canary Wharf is a new research and laboratory building next to the Elizabeth line station, see picture. New research facilities are planned in Whitechapel. And what is the response of the Council? they failed various times to support this growth, now they want to add extra taxes to the construction of new Research & Development buildings (called CIL Community Infrastructure Levy - its a tax on every square meter of new construction) That might be OK if the money used was to help all residents or the industry itself by building supporting infrastructure. CIL is meant to be spent according to the Council on 3.13 CIL must be spent on the provision, improvement, replacement, operation, or maintenance of relevant infrastructure 3.15 It is important to note that CIL can only be spent on projects to ‘support the development of an area’. But that is not what it used for, its used instead to fund other things and most of it was internally borrowed. My January FOI asking for more detail on internal borrowing has not been answered yet. The Council need to get an examiner to agree to the change of CIL tax rates for Research & Development by saying they need this extra £ for new infrastructure. But its a lie, so I wrote to the examiner below stating why they should reject this request and that the Council need to be held to account on following CIL regulations. The Council will still get £ from this development later on in business rates and Council tax from employees (so we won't lose out) but I want these new Research & Development buildings built here (because it helps if they are close together) and adding taxes discourages that. This was the consultation, it was very short. talk.towerhamlets.gov.uk/en-… Dear LBTH, This is a statement to the examiner requesting that you reject the LB Tower Hamlets request for a Research & Development CIL change at £117 per square meter. There is no real funding gap that justifies this additional charge. The Councils Infrastructure Delivery Plan 2024 (IDP) is a list of projects to justify high CIL rates it is NOT a document that actually guides the infrastructure spending of the Council. Spendng decisions are driven by political need i.e. St Georges swimming pool not infrastructure planning documents like the IDP nor other documents like the Isle of Dogs and South Poplar OAPF or the Isle of Dogs Neighbourhood Plan. That can be clearly seen by looking at recent LBTH Cabinet documents as well as the evidence of budgeted and actual project delivery. CIL is a tax on development for wider Council financial use not a source of funding for infrastructure improvements in areas of high growth. I would welcome an opportunity to demonstrate to the examiner that despite earning huge amounts for the Council in s106, New Homes Bonus and CIL that almost none of it has been spent to improve the most important growth area in the UK, the E14 postcode area around Canary Wharf, which has the tallest and densest residential towers in western Europe. CIL has not been spent on projects to ‘support the development of an area’ to quote the IDP. The only exceptions are where Canary Wharf Group insisted on delivering a school and GP surgery in Wood Wharf as they are also aware of the Councils failure to deliver infrastructure. 1)    Comparing the IDP to actual spending plans a)    The IDP was updated in September 2024 and given the amount of CIL, S106 and New Homes Bonus monies available there should be by now clear evidence of projects underway or being budgeted for. Or for previous iterations of the IDP. b)    But the recently published 2026/27 Council capital budget shows very few of the IDP projects in the 4-year capital budget, in part because there is no intention to pursue them. The same applies to earlier versions of the IDP, where they ever delivered. See Annex 2 Appendix 9A to 9C of the budget pack for the reports. democracy.towerhamlets.gov.u… You can ask Council officers to demonstrate which IDP projects are actually in the budget or projects delivered by earlier versions of the IDP. I can also provide a list comparing this and previous budget requests against the current and former IDPs. You will see that they don’t align but I don’t have time to do so today given the short consultation period. c)    This is also an issue with the 2017 GLA’s Isle of Dogs and South Poplar Opportunity Area Planning Framework (OAPF) Development Infrastructure Funding Study (DIFS). Despite a number of consultants reports being produced there is no evidence nine years later of any material changes i.e. electricity supply. Again compare the DIFS document from 2017 to projects actually delivered or budgeted for. Backup here data.london.gov.uk/download/… data.london.gov.uk/dataset/i… Very few of the 1) critical nor 2) essential enabling mitigations from 2017 happened or if they happened it was many years later suggesting a lack of urgency. d)    I can confirm as the founder and Secretary of the Isle of Dogs Neighbourhood Planning Forum, with a Neighbourhood plan adopted in 2021 after an 86% yes vote at referendum that the guidance on CIL spending in Appendix A3 has been wholly ignored by LBTH. The Neighbourhood Plan said ‘Initial priorities for such spending should be based on the DIFS produced by Peter Brett Associates as part of the OAPF (or any successor report). The DIFS assumes that all CIL generated in the OAPF area is used for Infrastructure benefiting the OAPF area.” That did not happen. The 6 years of my life that I spent on the Neighbourhood Plan were a complete waste of time as the Council have ignored it. Backup documents towerhamlets.gov.uk/lgnl/pla… democracy.towerhamlets.gov.u… 2)    Schools being closed, not opened a)    In addition if you compare the IDP to the latest Cabinet report on planning for schools titled ‘Planning for School Places 2025/26 Review and Recommendations School Places 2025-16 Review and Recommendations’ published December 2025 that makes clear that pupil numbers at both primary and secondary school have been in decline in Tower Hamlets from 2023, this is not new information and was known in 2024 when the IDP was updated. The focus will be on closing not opening schools. The IDP suggests the opposite with a long list of schools that the Council has no intention of building but will claim CIL for. b)    In addition two secondary schools have closed or are about to close in Tower Hamlets and four primary schools have also been closed in recent years. This is in part because of the Councils lack of interest in making lives easier for young families so as a result many families leave the area before their children hit primary school age. c)    The government will fund the construction of a permanent site for Canary Wharf College Secondary at Westferry Printworks E14 replacing a smaller temporary site. The Council have just opened a new secondary school on the Wapping Highway. The rebuild of George Greens Secondary school has been cancelled. As a result there will be little call for CIL spending on new schools as the IDP suggests but that is one of the largest funding requirements. democracy.towerhamlets.gov.u… 3)    What happened to CIL already earn’t? a)    You need to ask what happened to the cash received so far. You will find much of it has been internally borrowed to spend on other things not covered by CIL regulations. Does the interest rate charged on that borrowing match inflation? If not, then the value of that money will erode over time. What are the repayment plans?. Why is this information so hard to find? b)    You also need to ask what happened to the projects meant to be part-funded by CIL like the South Quay Bridge. After many years it appears to be dead. The same happened to earlier river Lea bridge projects, they all failed which is why they are now being resurrected. c)    See attached document to see how CIL is actually being spent. The annual Residents Survey is a code for political decisions. The comments about Neighbourhood Plans in this document are incorrect. democracy.towerhamlets.gov.u… 4)    No Embassy category Interesting that no opportunity was taken in this document to add Embassy to the list of development types given the Chinese Embassy moving to Tower Hamlets. To make clear that the non-diplomatic sections of an Embassy can be charged CIL. Reasons to reject this change The increased CIL costs will negatively impact the growth of a nationally important industry in Tower Hamlets with developments in Canary Wharf and Whitechapel underway (one stop apart on the Elizabeth line). The CIL increase will offer zero benefit to the industry that will pay for it nor local residents. The current UK economy shows the risk of over taxing industries and employment. The Council would be better off not charging this new CIL rate and benefiting later from increased employment opportunities and business rates income. The country would benefit from the agglomeration impact of a healthy life sciences centre in Whitechapel and Canary Wharf It’s just a tax that will fund other Council activities which are already well funded by government (the Council will receive large funding increases in the government’s latest local government finance settlement), Council tax, and business rates. gov.uk/government/collection… Tower Hamlets has collected huge amounts of S106, CIL and New Homes Bonus in recent decades but has not used that money for its intended purpose due to a lack of political interest and poor delivery mechanisms. It should not be encouraged to keep repeating this. The Council in the IDP says 3.13 CIL must be spent on the provision, improvement, replacement, operation, or maintenance of relevant infrastructure 3.15 It is important to note that CIL can only be spent on projects to ‘support the development of an area’. It cannot be used to mitigate site specific impacts; this is the role of S106 Planning Obligations. It needs to be held to account to do so not internally borrow it or spend it on grants. Please reject this requested CIL change. My credentials to write this are based on the following: ·      I was the LBTH Councillor for Canary Wharf ward from 2014 to 2022 ·      Former LBTH planning committee member (Strategic Development and Development Committee) ·      Founder and Secretary of the Isle of Dogs Neighbourhood Planning Forum ·      Long time resident of the Isle of Dogs ·      I run the largest Facebook group in Tower Hamlets with 77,000 members facebook.com/groups/14584380… ·      Qualified accountant (CIMA) ·      Employment at a senior level in finance at two London local authorities since 2022 Sincerely yours, Andrew Andrew Wood

Hopefully LBTH win this and open the Road. GENTRIFICATION

Have been re-reading Tower Hamlets Council's submission to MHCLG for today's belated debate on the stricter Govt intervention. The omission of the Govt's actual critique of the lack of progress is an e.g. of how LBTH, under Mayor Lutfur Rahman's leadership, misleads our residents

Worth reading this excellent report by Cllr @CampaignerAbdi in his role as Scrutiny Lead for Community Safety. LBTH has a good track record on youth justice, but too often young adults get a custodial sentence that does nothing to reduce the risk of them reoffending on release.

Deze vrouw is het bewijs dat de norm vd sollicitant totaal mislukt is. Men kiest niet meer voor kwaliteit, maar voor vrouwen, liefst met een kleurtje en de kers op de taart zou zijn als ze in de LBTH... zouden vallen. Door niet voor kwaliteit te kiezen gaat Nederland ten onder.