Bow West Community Safety Events Report by Cllr Nathalie Bienfait

Written By John W

The December crime map for the Bow West area
December 2022 Crime Map for Bow West

Below is a guest post by Bow West Cllr Nathalie Bienfait detailing recent community events within the Bow West area, plus details of local policing priorities (set by local residents), and a recap of how to report crime and ASB.

Nathalie has been working with MEOTRA behind the scenes on a number of issues and this article gives further information on some of them.


Successful community safety events in Bow West
Cllr Nathalie Bienfait

 

Bow West recently hosted two community safety events. These have been an important forum for residents to meet the agencies involved in keeping us safe and discuss issues that are affecting them.

 

Local police Safer Neighbourhoods Team (SNT), the council’s Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) and Safer Communities teams and housing association ASB teams and all came together to meet residents at a community safety walkabout on 26th January and a community policing ward panel on 2nd February.

 

The next community policing ward panel is planned for Thursday 13th April - further details to be confirmed.

 

Some of the key areas of concern for residents were:

 

  • Malmesbury Estate, where there have been reports of young people engaging in ASB and crime and have been seen carrying knives.
  • Tredegar Square, where there are ongoing reports of ASB, and drug-related activities and regular speeding cars.
  • Clinton Road, where large groups of people and cars gather regularly and hold loud parties, take drugs and leave plenty of litter.
  • Hyper-local drug-dealing reports were also made for Aberavon and Whitman Roads.
  • Dark areas were reported around the ward, highlighting areas where street lighting is insufficient which makes people feel unsafe.

 

A further issue raised was concern about the hiring out of the Epainos Ministries New Testament Church of God following the fatality on Morgan Street in September and a build up of noise complaints for the venue:

 

In response, the Church has proactively changed its hiring practices to align with neighbours’ feedback. They have stipulated that parties must end at 10pm and hirers are to be out of the venue by 11pm. If parties are likely to go on later, hirers must apply for a Temporary Events Notice from the council which is subject to checks by the council’s noise and licensing teams.

 

The Church has also engaged openly with the council’s noise team. The noise team are responsive and make assessments of noise from inside residents’ homes to assess if noise amounts to a statutory disturbance. Residents are encouraged to make reports to this team if they have concerns.

 

The police and other agencies had the following responses to the other issues raised:

 

On the Malmesbury Estate, the Tower Hamlets Homes ASB team are working hard to gather evidence of the recent concerning reports made by residents. They have been working with young people caught up in crime by referring them to organisations such as Streets of Growth which make sure young people get mentoring and are engaged in education or training. The Police also reported that they conducted some stop-and-searching recently following ASB reports from Whitton Walk.

 

In Tredegar Square, police reported that this has been one of their priority areas for many years. They mentioned that the design of the square unfortunately lends itself to ASB and speeding cars. They regularly attend the square on proactive visits and also respond to calls from residents. Residents are encouraged to report all instances of ASB, crime and speeding to the council and the local police team. Crimes which are urgent can be reported to the police response team by calling 999.

 

On Clinton Road, residents are making reports to the ASB team in the council and sending those reports to the local police SNT too. These reports are being picked up by the Tower Hamlets Enforcement Officers (THEOs) who have been patrolling the area proactively. When activities happen outside the SNT’s working hours, residents are encouraged to call 999 to get a response team to come and observe what is happening and take enforcement action if needed.

 

For the issues of drug dealing on the streets, the enforcement agencies have a map of ‘hot spots’ which are areas which have been reported by the public. They will visit those areas frequently to signal to drug dealers that the area is not safe for them. Residents are also encouraged to report the times when they seen deals happening - that way, CCTV can be used to potentially catch perpetrators.

 

Do you have any areas of concern?

 

The concerns raised above are the main areas which have been highlighted to us by residents. If you know of any areas or problems you would like looked into, please report it to the relevant agencies who can respond. We are always keen to hear from residents and are committed to making Bow West safer and more inclusive.

 

How and where to report:

 

Report crime to Police: 

  • Call 999 (urgent)
  • Call 101 (non-urgent)

 

Report crimes anonymously to Crime stoppers:

 

Report crimes and ASB to local SNT:

 

Report ASB to council:

 

Report CCTV timings to Cllr Nathalie Bienfait - if you suspect a crime was caught on a CCTV camera, note down the time and send it to Cllr Bienfait who can forward this to the CCTV team in the council:

 

Report ASB to Tower Hamlets Homes:

 

Report noise complaints to council:

  • Call 020 7364 5000 - service hours are:
    • 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday
    • Out of Hours Noise Response Service on Thursday to Sunday (evenings only) from 8pm to 3.30am)


John W
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