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Mayor Rahman delays designation of Roman Road Bow Neighbourhood Forum despite it meeting requirements

He does seem threatened by any groups that express different views’: As the Mayor of Tower Hamlets refuses to cooperate with the Neighbourhood Forum, the voice of the community is at stake. 

Tower Hamlets Council has not responded to the Roman Road Bow Neighbourhood Forum’s (RRBNF) most recent application for designation, following its rejection last year by Mayor Lutfur Rahman due to a perceived lack of diversity.

The RRBNF, a community-led body in the Roman Road area, was set up in 2016 to gather resident views about what type of development should be permitted in the wards of Bow West and Bow East. 

Over the next six years, the group was responsible for developing the Roman Road Bow Neighbourhood Plan giving residents a say in shaping planning policies that affect the Roman Road area. 

The Plan went to a public referendum in 2022 and the local community voted for it to be adopted.

The Forum consists of 350 residents and must provide the details of 21 members to the council to demonstrate that it’s representative of the local population. This process of formal designation by the council must be renewed every five years for the Forum to be recognised, and to continue monitoring the implementation of the Plan.

Despite applying for designation on April 5 this year, the Forum hasn’t heard anything back from the council, disempowering the group from being able to oversee community development.

The group submitted an open letter to Mayor Rahman and Councillor Kabir Ahmed requesting progress on its application on June 18 but received no response. It has since written to the Best Value Inspectors sent from central government to investigate the council, and submitted a formal complaint. 

Without formal designation, the future of both the Forum and its Neighbourhood Plan is at risk, spelling an end to community-led development in Bow.

‘He does seem threatened by any groups that express different views,’ says Mike Mitchell, a local resident and member of the Forum, about Mayor Rahman. ‘He does find it hard to tolerate views that challenge him.’

He added: ‘The Mayor says in his manifesto, which he got elected on, that he wants to be a “listening council”. It’s there on the manifesto, so we’re just asking him to do what he said he’d do.’

The Forum was first recognised by the council in 2017 but the statutory lifespan of the RRBNF expired in August 2022, three months before residents voted for the Plan to be approved. 

When the group applied for redesignation, their application was rejected by Mayor Rahman in 2023 for not reflecting the ‘large Asian and Bangladeshi community in Tower Hamlets’. 

Despite resubmitting the Forum’s list of 21 names that better reflected the diversity of the Forum’s 350 members, Mayor Rahman and Councillor Ahmed have allegedly raised renewed concerns about the committee’s composition. 

Even though there is no legal requirement for a proportion of people in neighbourhood forums to be of any particular racial background, the Forum followed the council’s request to diversify the names submitted on its most recent application.

In the open letter addressed to Mayor Rahman and Councillor Ahmed, Mitchell said: ‘In preparing the submission of a new application we made sure that the required 21 names on the application are drawn from different sections of the local community. The list includes people of Bangladeshi, Black African, Indian, North African, Pakistani and Sr-Lankan heritage as well as white UK residents.’

Two out of six committee members of the RRBNF are also of minority ethnic backgrounds.

It’s now been years since the Forum last had designation and if this doesn’t happen soon, it’s unlikely the group will survive. The RRBNF is hosting its Annual General Meeting at the Bow Idea Store on Saturday 20 July to gain support from the local community in its effort to survive. Without significant attendance from local residents, the future of the Forum will be at risk, potentially jeopardizing the future of neighbourhood planning in Bow.

A spokesperson from the council said: ‘A redesignation application for Roman Road Bow Neighbourhood Forum was refused by Cabinet in June 2023 as it was determined the Forum’s membership was not drawn from different sections within the neighbourhood planning area. Since the refusal, council officers have been working constructively with the Forum to consider how it can be representative of the area’s residents.

‘We are currently assessing the appropriate timeframe for a six-week public consultation on the Forum’s redesignation application and how this aligns with our reporting cycle. Planning law requires determination of an application within 13 weeks of commencement of the consultation in public, not from the submission of the designation application.’

For more news about your local area, read Serious breach of data suspected as Tower Hamlets residents receive dozens of unsolicited political emails

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3 thoughts on “Mayor Rahman delays designation of Roman Road Bow Neighbourhood Forum despite it meeting requirements

  • Matt Rowley

    If I wasn’t away this weekend I’d be attending the meeting on Saturday.

    Who is better placed to help decide what happens locally than local residents?

    Reply
  • The forum is very Bow dominated, who residents have forgotten Old Ford exists…

    Reply
  • Jessica Hutton

    The real reason this will not happen is due to the ongoing mass illegal immigration and any funding in the borough meant for neighbourhood forum will go to the process of rehousing them instead of for local people or businesses

    Reply

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