Phone snatches are top of the list at Thursday's ward panel on Celebration Avenue

The annual safety ward panel for Stratford Olympic Park, the ward East Village sits in, is on Thursday 15 October from 6.30pm, at the LightHouse and Gardens, 38 Celebration Avenue (E20 1DB). It runs for about two hours and is open to anyone who lives, works or studies in the ward. It ends with a vote on what the neighbourhood police team works on next.

If phone snatches or missing parcels have bothered you this year, this is the room to say so.

What happens on the night

The panel's own listing sets out the evening:

• Meet the ward police team, local councillors, Newham's community safety officers and Councillor Imam Haque, Newham's Deputy Cabinet Member for Community Safety.
• A session on who handles anti-social behaviour: what the council's community safety officers do, and what the police do.
• An introduction to MetEngage, the Met's community messaging platform.
• The police present crime figures for the ward and report back on what they have done since the last meeting.
• Results of the ward panel survey, then questions.
• A discussion and vote on the ward's crime and safety priorities, and what the police say they can do about each.

What's on the table now

The Met set three priorities for the ward on 27 July, and all three name East Village.

• Phone theft. The streets the Met lists are Celebration Avenue, Temple Mill Lane, Honour Lea Avenue, Abercrombie Road, Derny Avenue, Villiers Gardens and Weavers Row. The plan is targeted patrols, talking to the estate about CCTV, and being visible at those spots.
• Snatches and robbery. Patrols around areas that have seen more snatches and robberies, "predominantly in the East Village area", with a mix of overt and covert operations.
• Parcel theft. Insignia Point, plus Chobham Manor around Abercrombie Road. The plan is high-visibility patrols at peak delivery times, work with housing teams in the blocks, and joint work with the Park's security.

Each one is due its next review on 23 October, eight days after the panel. The vote on Thursday is where they stay, change or get replaced.

What the numbers say

I pulled the ward's recorded crime from data.police.uk for June, July and August, the latest months published. Across those three months there were 99 thefts from the person (mostly snatches) and 22 robberies.

About half are pinned to Westfield's shopping area, which is also in this ward. About a dozen sit on or near East Village streets, among them Anthems Way, Weavers Row, Cheering Lane and Celebration Avenue. Police data moves each crime to the nearest of a set of anonymous points, so treat the street names as rough.

That gap is worth raising. The priorities name our streets, but most of the recorded crime is at Westfield. Either snatches in East Village are going unreported, or the patrols are aimed in the wrong place. Neighbours who have been targeted are the people who can answer that.

Before you go

• Report anything you haven't yet. The panel works from recorded crime. Report online at met.police.uk or on 101, and 999 if it is happening now.
• Add it to the Hub's trackers. The phone snatches tracker and Parcel Watch show where neighbours' reports cluster, whether or not they went to the police. Screenshots are a useful thing to bring.
• Can't make it? Email the ward team at stratfordolympicpark@met.police.uk with what you would have said. The team is Sergeants Claire Day and Troy Simpson, PCs Promise Anele and Robert Brady, and PCSOs Andrew Morris and George Gates.

The LightHouse is the community space and garden on Celebration Avenue, a short walk from Stratford International. The Met's next public date after this is a community meeting at Westfield on 24 November, 9.30am to 2.30pm.

Sources: the event listing by Safety Ward Panel Olympic Park on Facebook (venue, date, length and agenda); the Met's neighbourhood feeds for Stratford Olympic Park at data.police.uk (start time, postcode, the November meeting), priorities and team; street-level crime for June to August 2026 from data.police.uk, counted across the ward boundary; venue address from the LightHouse's ArtRabbit listing.

Photo: Tartenisz / Magnific, Premium licence.