Barking and Dagenham Council leader: Acid attackers could be thrown out of their council home

An east London council has said it is considering punishing acid attackers and their families by throwing them out of their council homes.

It comes following a shocking spate of attacks in London in recent weeks, with the number of crimes in the capital soaring.

Five people were targeted in just 90 minutes in a string of terrifying attacks in the north and east of the capital on July 13.

The following evening, another person was attacked with acid in Dagenham.

And Cllr Darren Rodwell, leader of the Barking and Dagenham Council, said the council was looking into what powers it had to take its own action against perpetrators.

He said the council wanted attackers to know “we ultimately have the ultimate deterrent which is we could ask them to leave the home that they are in”.

He added that this included the acid attacker’s parents and families.

He said: “If you’re not willing to address these issues as a parent, if you’re not willing to be a parent to your children, then you’re leaving us no alternative but to ask whether we as a collective community we think it’s right that you should be in that community.

“It’s got to a stage now where we need to start saying what are the rights of parents, what are the rights of children but what is the right of the community?

“Ultimately I’m there for the good law-abiding citizens of Barking and Dagenham and I want to make sure that they understand that we will do everything in our powers to work with the police to say this is not acceptable and there is a zero tolerance approach.”

Cllr Rodwell said that injunctions could be used against “tenants or tenants’ families who don’t believe that they’ve got the same responsibilities as the rest of us”.

He added: “So we’re looking at it now as a council, we already have information in our tenant agreements that allow us to take people to court anyway and what we’re saying is this need to be a London-wide discussion about the values of London.”