Tower Hamlets Labour group post images of rubbish in streets

Labour activists started posting a trail of photos showing rubbish in streets around Tower Hamlets after the council claimed 97.7 of its streets are litter free.

The photos started appearing on Tower Hamlets Labour’s Twitter account earlier today along with a series of ironic messages.

Tweets included “must just be just bad luck in choosing these streets and “the rest of the borough must be immaculate.”

The council’s claim had come in response to the Labour opposition group starting a campaign against cuts to street cleaning, introduced under Tower Hamlets independent Mayor Lutfur Rahman.

The Labour councillors are protesting over the introduction of a �15 charge to previously free waste collections, along with charges of up to �108 per pest control visit.

A council spokeswoman said they use a third sector organisation, called Muslim Women’s Collective, for gathering the data which showed 97.7 of streets are litter free.

According to their findings 97.9 per cent of the borough’s streets were also free from fly posting.

But spokeswoman for Tower Hamlets Labour Group, Cllr Shiria Khatun, was not convinced.

She said: “It is not true. The amount of dumped rubbish has gone up. Streets are not being cleaned regularly and some streets are riddled with litter.

“In Spitalfields, the Tower Hamlets Mayor’s own ward, streets are riddled with mice and rats. In today’s day and age that is scary with the impact it could have on the health of children and vulnerable people.”

The council spokeswoman said the process used for collecting the data was the same one used by the government to collect data on street cleanliness.

She said: “The Muslim Women’s Collective have been trained in collecting the data to this recognised high standard, providing a robust way of monitoring our streets.”