Tower Hamlets London Borough Council

Metropolitan Police

Police have released the images of two men wanted in connection with targeted stabbing in east London.

Police were called at about 15.00 on Thursday, 11 October, to a commercial premises in Globe Road, Bethnal Green where a man had been attacked.

A 33-year-old man was found at the scene with stab wounds to his back and his arm. The injured male was taken to hospital with injuries that were not life threatening.

Det Con Ben Stone said: “This was a violent planned attack, and it was mere luck that the victim wasn’t more seriously, or even fatally, injured."

Tower Hamlets residents have two weeks left to tell the council which services they would least like to see cut.

The local authority says it needs to save an extra £44million by 2022 and has launched the ‘Your Borough, Your Future’ survey.

The questionnaire asks local residents, businesses and community groups what they would like to see prioritised and where they would like to see spending cuts take place.

It also asks whether residents would support a council tax increase of three per cent in order to bring in an extra £3million per year.

Tower Hamlets mayor John Biggs said the administration had already shaved £38million from expenses since introducing a three-year budget in 2017.

Three council-run nurseries and a specialist deaf unit will shut down despite objections from councillors and more than 35,000 people.

Last month Tower Hamlets defied parents who argued that the plans to close Overland Nursery, which caters for children with special needs, as well as Mary Sambrook nursery in Wapping and John Smith nursery in Whitechapel, would leave parents without childcare options and force them out of work.

Protestors were thrown a lifeline when the council’s overview and scrutiny committee “called in” the decision and sent it back to the executive mayor for reconsideration.

But at a meeting of the council’s cabinet on Wednesday, Mayor John Biggs said the closures would go ahead despite the committee’s pleas.

“There is a clear financial challenge facing the council,” he said.

The mayor said: “This hasn’t been an easy decision but I think it is the right thing to do given the high costs to the local authority and relatively low reach.”

Earlier this year a parents launched a petition against the nursery closures, which gained ten-of-thousands of signatures.

Mary Sambrook nursery in Wapping has already closed and John Smith nursery in Whitechapel is scheduled to close later this year. Overlands will close next year.

A spokeswoman for the Save Our Nurseries campaign said: “The mayor’s determination to close the Tower Hamlets local authority day nurseries and rely on the private sector to deliver the full-time care ignores the repeated attempts that parents have made to explain that expensive private nurseries are not set up to properly support children with special educational needs (SEN), who are often labelled as ‘difficult’ or complicated users.

“Parents and carers of children with SEN have explained how important they have found early intervention and the integrated care at these nurseries.”

Detectives would like to speak to the man following a stabbing in Tower Hamlets, in which a 26-year-old was injured.

The victim was taken to an east London hospital following the attack on 5 August but was later discharged.

He won his first competitive marathon in Chicago earlier this month.

But Sir Mo Farah was back to school on Monday to encourage children in east London to get active.

Sir Mo was snapped this morning doing his famous Mobot pose with Year 6 pupils from Cubitt Town Junior School, Tower Hamlets.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan was also there to join in the fun.

The pair visited the school alongside Elaine Wyllie, founder of The Daily Mile.

The Daily Mile is a social physical activity, with children running or jogging in the fresh air with friends. It aims to make children fitter, healthier and better and concentrating in class.

More than 350 schools in London have signed up to the scheme so far, which equates to about 117,000 pupils.

John Biggs, Mayor of Tower Hamlets said: “Tower Hamlets was an Olympic borough in 2012 and those aspirational Games are the heritage of our children.

“I am proud we have more schools signed up to the Daily Mile than any other borough in London, but we will continue to work with schools, businesses and other partners to develop opportunities that contribute to the ongoing health and wellbeing of our residents.”

Tower Hamlets is hosting a community clean up as the council revealed it clears 7,000 tonnes of rubbish of the borough’s streets every year.

The fifth annual Big Clean Up runs from 2 to 8 October across the borough.

Residents can take part in cleaning up the streets, alongside representatives from The Canary Wharf Group, The London Legacy Development Corporation, The Canal and River Trust and Tower Hamlets Homes.

Earlier this year the Local Government Association, which represents more than 370 councils, warned that clearing up fly-tipping cost the taxpayer £57 million last year – a rise of 13%.

London boroughs account for roughly 40% of the UKs fly-tipping cases.

A bar owner hopes to start an Oktoberfest event in Bethnal Green after getting permission to turn a disused railway arch into a microbrewery.

Tower Hamlets Council has granted Vagabond Wines an alcohol licence for its Boxcar Brewery in the arch in Birkbeck Street.

The site will be the independent merchant’s seventh London premises.

Owner Stephen Finch told the licensing committee: “It will be a well-run operation and we will look to hire locally.

“Assuming things go well, we would like to eventually do something like a Bethnal Green Oktoberfest, within reason of course.”

Residents had complained the proposed closing times of 23:30 on weekdays and 00:30 on weekends were too late.

But, Mr Finch agreed to scale them back by half an hour to “address concerns”.