THE END of Birmingham’s long-running bin strike may be in sight – leaving the question: why on earth did the Labour Council take so long to settle the dispute? The problems began in September 2023 when Birmingham City Council effectively ...

THE GOVERNMENT is tackling childhood obesity in many ways – and one of them is a ban on advertising foods high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS). Retailers can’t advertise junk food on television before 9pm or online at any ...

FREE school meals for all was one of the key promises of Mayor Lutfur Rahman’s Administration when it took office in May 2022. The policy has paid off, with 38,000 school pupils benefitting from the scheme in the last four ...

OVER THE last four years, Mayor Lutfur Rahman has lived up to his promises and transformed the Tower Hamlets Youth Service. Gone are the Biggs days, when the Labour Mayor expected young people to share just eight hubs across the ...

IT’S NEVER easy for a political party to write its manifesto. Usually the problem is how to condense all their aspirations, all the things they want to achieve, into a short snappy statement that people will read. But when it ...

STARMER knows this is serious. It was bad enough when an enlivened Kemi Badenoch seized the gift of the Mandelson scandal to give the Prime Minister a firm telling off in the House of Commons – but now his own ...

By Emdad Rahman History and heritage took centre stage in East London as the Kakardia Teradal Alipur Welfare Trust UK unveiled its landmark publication, Phinick-1. The book, a meticulous chronicle of 400 years of Kakardia village’s history and traditions, was ...

Maruf Ahmed WHO WANTS to be frozen all year? The Tower Hamlets Be Well centres do! The Council has frozen the fees at all its Be Well Centres for the next financial year (2025-26). Most boroughs have sports and/or leisure ...

IT IS several years since the NHS decided to modernise the Royal London Hospital – triggering a wholesale redevelopment of the surrounding part of Whitechapel. But will the development bring improvements to the area? The opportunity to improve Whitechapel wasn’t ...

Maruf Ahmed THE SLAVE TRADE was running across the Atlantic – but in Tower Hamlets, between 1567 and 1802, Black people were finding refuge and telling their stories. Now a new exhibition tells their stories. Six local residents have dug ...