We have ended our formal partnership with Tower Hamlets Council.
You will find out-dated information on the Council’s website about Community Safety.
- OWL no longer exists as a working platform, was concluded on 31. 10. 2024
- John Fortune no longer works for Tower Hamlets Council
- THNWA, we do NOT work with them, their website wasn’t up-date in 2 years, exception their new NW logo showing Tower Hamlets on it.
- There is no current formally ratified ASB policy existing with Tower Hamlets Council.
- The Community Safety Policy is heavily politically biased.
- Andrew Wood’s posting of the dire financial situation with the Council.
- Simon Smith, head of Community Safety, emailed us on 2/1/26 stating that we are no longer part of the TH mailing list for community safety operations.
- Chris Weavers no longer chairs the Safer Neighbourhood Board
There are a lot of complex changes happening at the Council, the Police and the government. What is important for us local people, is that we get sufficient law and order to keep the borough in good and safe living condition.
Neighbourhood Watch
The typical model of community safety structure would be.
Neighbourhood Watch Association, working with Council and Police to organise community safety relations with the local people.
However in Tower Hamlets the Neighbourhood Watch Association has not advertised any public meetings since over 2 years. All they managed to do was change their logo, supplied by Ourwatch. All data from Neighbourhood Watch are channelled through Ourwatch, run by Neighbourhood Alert, run by VISAV in Nottingham.
We have outlined in many posts why we do not like the online Neighbourhood Watch system. Additionally we do not think that access to computers running the Ourwatch connections are sufficiently kept protected from access by not authorised persons. Since I (Johanna Kaschke) stopped maintaining the system from an exclusive office location, the Ourwatch admin is now run from a community Centre on the Samuda Estate, that has many people sharing one office and computers.
The Neighbourhood Watch system is fed by one application
- VISAV
- Neighbourhood Alert
- Met Engage
- Neighbourhood Watch
- Met Engage
- Neighbourhood Alert
From the point of your first registration, you get never verified until you land on Neighbourhood Watch if you tick the boxes confirming your membership.
It is a complicated jungle of online registration and user-share processes, that actually never check who you are. As Tower Hamlets has been found to have the most cases of Stalking in London. Neighbourhood Watch platform enables stalking, as registrants can just join a local group, where their victim is a member without being checked.
THNWA
My name (Johanna Kaschke) might still appear on THNWA online articles because I created the website and the THNWA, I was actually registering the charity because I got funded by the Mayor of London as far back as 2011 to create a Neighbourhood Watch Association. However, the way it is run currently, I have decided to remove myself from it and start the new organisation Tower Hamlets Crime Watch. Unfortunately the THNWA has not up-dated their website to show that some community organisations like Parkview and Teviot are no longer involved with them.
Tower Hamlets Council
The council’s former well-liked and well-known Community Safety officer John Fortune has left the Council and no longer works there. We have worked closely with the Council when John Fortune worked there but now no longer get informed about Community engagement sessions.
We used to heavily support ASB week and were out and about with the community engagement vans, working with THEO and other officers, as well as councillors. We published ASB week engagement events in a readable format for easy understanding.
The Council does not have a formal ASB policy in place in 2025.
The Community Safety Policy for 2025 – 2029 is heavily politically biased and the Hate Crime Department for the Council has changed beyond recognition. Last year, all females were at one point shown to wear headscarves. I would never agree to wear a head scarf for such a meeting. Lutfur Rahman, defended that females were banned from a charity run organised by East London Mosque. A person from the East London Mosque applied to be chair of the Hate Crime Panel, that is when we left the organisation.
You must report all hate crime to the Met Police.
We feel freedom of choice, freedom of expression, Equality under the law is very important and those attributes must be adhered to at all times.
Since Tower Hamlets Council has now decided to no longer keep us on their partnership mailing list, we are unable to promote the public engagements they do.
Sadly Tower Hamlets Council web pages on Community Safety are also badly out of date and confusing people who visit them.
Ward Panels
Chris Weavers, who chaired the Safer Neighbourhood Board (SNB), which is held in conjunction with Tower Hamlets Council has left the organisation to concentrate on work with the teaching union and since then also the Ward Panels in Tower Hamlets have strongly reduced in number.
We continue to support and promote ward panels because they are run with the Tower Hamlets Police who organise them. Though the ward panel chairs meet with the SNB at Tower Hamlets Council.
See our Safer Neighbourhood Page and Ward Panel page for details on both.
Council Finances
On 2/1/26 former Councillor Andrew Wood has published a detailed article on his Facebook group detailing the finance problems of the Council supplied documents by auditors.
Whilst we see that the Council constantly comes up with inventive schemes to run the borough, e.g. employing over 70 THEO officers, it has become clear that those officers, cannot operate without the assistance of Met Police officers as the THEO officers, cost more than police officers, but have not sufficient powers. We have outlined their actual permissions here.
Recently Whitechapel PCSO officers had to assist colleagues in Wapping to keep control of ASB, showing that the 70 THEO officers working for Tower Hamlets Council have no effect on the issue.
Tower Hamlets Police
We strongly encourage all to continue working closely with Tower Hamlets Police, Metropolitan Police and all UK Police departments. We have created a link to Tower Hamlets and Met Police outlining how to best use the services for best community safety results.
Reporting
You must report certain types of ASB directly to the Council. Other types can be reported directly to Police. See our ASB page and also the Met Police and Tower Hamlets Council ASB page.
In emergencies always call 999 – How to report and where
See our Tower Hamlets Police page for instructions how to report and communicate with police safely and get up-dates on current cases.
Met Engage
Is the communications platform for Met Police at the moment. We know you need to read their messages. There is a link to all Met Engage local ward messages on our Safer Neighbourhood Page. We do not recommend that you actually use the Met Engage system to communicate with officers as it is not run via the Met Police computer systems. It is an entirely different platform run by VISAV, see above. Use our Tower Hamlets Police page for recommendations. Met Engage messages will only give you a VISAV created ref number but not a Met Police reference.
Clarity?
It can be confusing as we have many communications systems running dually alongside each other but all have technically specific and different platforms. That might not be clear to techno novices.
If you need any support and want to book a session, please feel free to book a course session online. We also give away free sim cards for people unable to afford WiFi Internet access from home.
Tower Hamlets Crime Watch 