Hundreds of people asked Redbridge’s political leaders to make promises on housing, homelessness, young people and crime last night.

The Salvation Army, churches, primary schools and secondary schools assembled and asked politicians to commit to action; promises they would have to keep if elected.

This comes just one week before people take to the polls to vote for their local councillors, on May 3.

In the main hall of Trinity Catholic High School, Woodford, Labour leader Jas Athwal and Conservative leader Paul Canal were put through their paces.

Someera Butt, headteacher of Al Noor primary school, co-chaired the meeting, which was organised by the Redbridge Citizens group.

Questions asked were based on a listening campaign which engaged with 1,124 Redbridge residents and businesses.

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The Salvation Army, schools and churches posed questions to the councillors.

Politicians had a minute to respond to questions posed by representatives from schools, churches and the Salvation Army.

Those watching were all given a table of questions with space to record the responses.

Cllr Athwal committed to making Redbridge a Living Wage accredited council by 2019-2020 and promised to write to schools “straight away” to introduce anti-hate crime teaching in Redbridge schools.

He struggled to fully commit to introducing StreetWatches, groups of residents and enforcement officers patrolling a residential area to deter criminals, in every Redbridge ward within 12 months of election.

He said he would ask for 13 months to implement borough-wide groups.

The Labour leader also made a clear commitment to formalising the borough’s rough sleepers’ protocol; a set of regulations that enforce the borough’s handling of homelessness cases.

He said the issue was already on the agenda for the next full council meeting after elections.

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Police, residents and teachers came together to hold the politicians accountable.

Both councillors committed to creating an Independent Youth Commission, chaired by a cabinet member, to encourage talks between the council and young people to tackle issues of knife crime, and a lack of recreational facilities and appropriate activities for young people.

Cllr Canal committed to creating public hate crime campaign to raise awareness of racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic hate crimes.

Both councillors could not commit to ensuring an even split of London Living Rent, social rent and community land trust homes on all new housing developments in the borough after election.

They both said they would struggle to make a financial commitment without data on hand to back it up.

Redbridge Citizens will work closely with the next elected council leader over the coming years to chase up all commitments made and effectively hold the council to account for their promises.