The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is divided into 20 wards, those Tower Hamlets Police Wards, correspond with the Councils’ wards for which there are elections for Ward Councillors. See here a link to your elected Councillors for all 20 wards.

The Met Police have Safer Neighbourhoods Teams for all 20 wards also and you can see the links and contact details to those on our website here.

A Ward Panel Handbook has been published by Met Police as guidance throughout the Greater London area for all London boroughs.

You can also get the links to all wards on the Met Police website here.

All Ward Panels consist of selected members and should meet every 3-4 months. The meetings are the responsibility of the Met Police but can have more or less independent chairs, who run the ward panels with autonomy. The Whitechapel Ward Panel is one of those, they have their own website. Yet I think a ward panel should not become a political pressure group.

All Ward panels should be equally well advertised by the Tower Hamlets Police.

1. Go to Met Police website
2. input your postcode into the my area search box
3. Your local ward comes up
4. Select the ‘Meetings and Events’ tab

Whilst on the Met Police website you can search for your local policing team.

Here should all public engagement events with your local SNT team be listed.

Unfortunately at present Ward Panel meetings are not advertised on the Met Police website. They should be advertised on the Met Police website.

I would very much like to see all ward panel meetings advertised on the Met Police website to provide a uniformed promotion of the ward panels, which do not rely on the engagement of local volunteers alone or force people to register with social media providers to get informed.

In some wards, you may have a very active chairs in others you don’t and I have had various complaints from people who feel they do not get to hear about ward panels, do not know who their chair is, do not get invited.

A good ward panel has around 20 members and those rotate yearly, so that positions of officers of the panels get shared by different people each year, as to spread the responsibility around.

I have contacted Met Police and suggested they intensify their efforts to stay in touch with the locals. After all we have the strongest ever Community strategy in place at present.

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I shall publish the wording of my suggestion here:

“I am concerned that in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets has no clear strategy, from the side of the police, to 

1. promote ward panels
   • If you check the Met Police website, under the local teams tabs for all 20 ward teams in Tower Hamlets, the SNT Ward Panel dates and times are not announced. 

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