Overview
Tower Hamlets is an inner London borough located in the east of London that struggles with poverty and inequality issues. The child poverty rate is the highest of all the London boroughs, with 55% of children judged to be living in households in poverty, compared to 39% in the typical London borough. While the unemployment rate in the borough fell by 2.5% percentage points between 2014/2017 and 2017/2020, one of the largest reductions in London, it is still higher than average at 7.2%.
Tower Hamlets has seen substantial increases in housing with an average of 680 new affordable, social and other discounted housing completions over 3 years (2016/17 - 2018/19). This is the highest of all London boroughs, the next highest being Greenwich at 360.
The grid below shows how Tower Hamlets compares against London overall on key poverty and inequality indicators. Red text denotes the fact that Tower Hamlets is worse than is typical for London on that indicator, and blue means it is better.