I recently advised Shazna Rahman*, a Bangladeshi Muslim woman in Newham. She came to seek debt advice from me at Toynbee Hall, a charity in Tower Hamlets that helps communities in poverty. She was wearing full black burkah . This is a piece of clothing covering her body completely. It was not the manifestation of her faith that struck me most, but the reality of her difficult and hard life. Her children were taken away from her by Social Services because she was unfit to look after herself and her children due to a highly traumatised divorce that resulted in a mental breakdown. She moved from Tower Hamlets to Newham into private accommodation. She claimed housing benefit to pay for her rent.  After a few years, she became homeless when her private landlord wanted to rent the property out to a professional couple who would pay more. Newham council put her in temporary accommodation because she was deemed in priority need due to her mental health. ...

It’s a well-known fact that individuals who suffer from a hampered mental capacity - be it mental health or learning difficulties - are most likely to be vulnerable in our communities. They are also more likely to be victims of miss-sold products and services by companies, even though organisations that are providing financial products and services have a duty under the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to take extra care towards these individuals. This is what the FCA has to say about vulnerable customers: ‘  The vulnerability of the customer, in particular where the firm understands the customer has some form of mental capacity limitation or reasonably suspects this to be so because the customer displays indications of some form of mental capacity limitation  (see  ■  CONC 2.10) But due to a culture of intensive selling to consumers, generated by employers placing and enforcing - often difficult and unrealistic - performance goals wh...

On 1 April 2017,  Tower Hamlets Council introduced a policy that removed full Council Tax Reduction Scheme from its self-employed residents. The policy change to begin charge council tax to the self-employed was approved by the council’s Cabinet and the Mayor, John Biggs,  on 10 January 2017.  Those who are hardest hit by the measure are mostly mini-cab drivers who are managing their living from hire purchase agreements on their cars in order to facilitate their self-employment status. They are usually working from local mini cab offices and complying with tough terms and conditions, for example, Uber's rating conditions in which they are forced to keep above 4.5 star ratings from their customers in order to remain in trade with the company; otherwise they are barred from  being on the list of its self-employed drivers.  When Community Money Matters spoke to a number of Bengali cab drivers on Bethnal Green Road, this is what they said...