Benefit protesters picket Tower Hamlets meeting over ‘bedroom tax’ evictions

Protesters in London’s deprived East End picketed Tower Hamlets council’s annual meeting last night over “bedroom tax” benefit cuts.

Members of the Benefit Justice campaign were protesting at families on housing allowance facing eviction if they can’t pay the amount being reduced from payments for those on council estates with a spare room.

“We have a clear list of action we can ask of the council,” said leading poverty campaigner Sister Christine Frost, who runs the Neighbours In Poplar charity. “There are also actions we in the community can do—we need to be talking to councillors.”

So they lobbied council members going in to the Town Hall in Mulberry Place, demanding a halt to any evictions due to benefit capping.

London Assembly budget chairman John Biggs, Labour’s candidate for next year’s election for Mayor in Tower Hamlets, is calling for “the bedroom tax” to be repealed.

He told a recent tenants’ meeting in Poplar chaired by Sister Christine: “I oppose the Bedroom Tax and support repeal.”

A petition was handed in to the Town Hall demanding the council and other East End social landlords commit themselves not to evicting anyone in arrears due to benefit cuts.