02/07/2014 BBC London News

said it had been bought by `n anonymous bidder. Now it is time for

the news where you are. This is BBC London News with me,

Asad Ahmad. Tower Hamlets Council has been

severely criticised in a report into its handling of May's local

and European elections. The Electoral Commission described

the council's count, which lasted four times longer than

it should, as "inadequately Here's our political correspondent,

Karl Mercer. It was the count that went on and

on and on. For a minute after minute,

hour after hour and recount after recount, staff here worked up

to 17 hour shifts, trying to work out who won the elections for mayor

and local council in Tower Hamlets. Eventually independent candhdate

Lutfur Rahman was declared But the scenes

as he left the count were as chaotic Hundreds of supporters gathdred

amid protests from their political opponents

and claims of intimidation. Today the electoral commisshon has

published a report into events at the count,

it doesn't make pretty reading. It says the venue was too small,

that there weren't enough counting It points to security delays

and says some counting staff were Fundamentally, the problems were

a failure in planning. There were delays in getting

counting staff and counting agents That delayed things by two

and a half hours. There were insufficient staff to be

able to either recover from that or to do the counting in the thme

the returning officer had intended. Fundamentally,

that meant that a local election count he planned to take six hours

took 23 and a half hours. All of this, says Peter Gold,

an opposition councillor, He'd written to the

Electoral Commission about it years The authority should actually say

something is going wrong here. What about the Government saying

that Tower Hamlets is not c`pable of running a proper election and count

and appointing people to do it? They have commissioners

for various things in local authorities, we should have

outside people run our elections in The Electoral Commission has now

ordered Tower Hamlets to have its plans for next general election

by December, a full five months There are major problems

and the council needs to stop being complacent and face up to them

and make sure this never happens again, otherwise

the public rightly won't have confidence in our democracy, in the

case of residents in Tower Hamlets. The election count was

John Williams' responsibility. He says he's learned lessons

from the night. Would it be fair to say

the count from start to finhsh was I wouldn't say it was a shalbles,

I would say there were certainly factors that led to it taking

a lot longer than we planned, including some

of the measures we put in place to It took longer than it should have

done to admit everybody to the count in the first placd, that's

true, but part of that was because we were absolutely keen to lake sure

nobody was in the count venue who Tower Hamlets says it has learned

lessons and says they will be put into place at a by`election due

to be held this Thursday. There will be more police on hand,

more people to do the count and a bigger venue, they don't want

a repeat of May's scenes. An employment tribunal has ruled

that a black Scotland Yard firearms officer suffered discrimination

because of her race and sex. The Metropolitan Police now faces

a compensation claim from Carol Howard,

who was said to have been "singled A BBC investigation has revealed how

a waste removal man who tells his customers he's legally disposing

of his rubbish has Under new guidelines, his company,

which is based in Kent, could be one of the first to face

tougher penalties for fly`thpping. We are trying to catch a fly`tipper

who dumped vanloads of rubbhsh. He's completely blocked

the lane here. I have cars that come down here

and have to then reverse in my This is who we believe is

responsible, Wally Marney. In a house with cameras

and a tracker in the rubbish, I'll be honest with you,

it would be 100 quid. Eight hours later,

he drives towards isolated country We temporarily lost the van

and rubbish. We've now found him, he is dmpty,

and we've suspect he's just dumped Emitting a signal, our tracker shows

he travelled down and Guilden Hill At 9.54pm, though, the tracker was

emitting a stationary signal from Church Road, suggesting the waste

from his truck had been tipped. Every item he had in the back of his

truck now littered the country lane. The following morning I

discovered the waste blocked They've just dumped this

right outside of our gate. In one week we believe he fly`tipped

on at least three occasions. In response to our investigation, Mr

Marney told us he never fly`tips. He says he pays someone else to

dispose of the rubbish, He refused to give us further

detail, repeatedly declined to be interviewed and said if we tried to

film him he'd smash of our camera. Mr Marney,

Colin Campbell from BBC News. After repeated requests for

an interview, we decided to ask him People pay you to get rid

of their rubbish but all you do is dump it in the

countryside, isn't it, Mr Marney? We want some answers off you,

Mr Marney. You're getting nothing off le,

nothing. Last year, it cost more than ?3

million to clear up fly`tipped This fly`tipper says he's now given

up collecting people's rubbhsh. Time now for the weather. Sdems like

this once again, because we are expecting it to be sunny again. It's

going to be warmer than yesterday. This evening and overnight, some

patchy cloud around but largely it's dry and clear with some mist or fog

patches developing through the second part of the night. Tomorrow,

we get off to a beautiful start, lovely sunshine, a bit of f`ir

lovely sunshine, a bit of fair weather cloud into the afternoon.

Temperatures at least 22 degrees around London. The centre of London

itself probably getting nearer 5 or itself probably getting nearer 25 or

26 degrees. On the outlook, it's a similar day on Thursday with

sunshine and warm conditions. A bit more cloud on Friday. None of this

survives into the more cloud on Friday. None of this

survives into the weekend, some rain around on Saturday.

It's certainly been a feast of football again. The temperature in

S?o Paulo was much the same as