The borough already has one of the highest rates of TB in the country. Official figures show that there were 60 cases per 100,000 people in Hackney last year, compared with 15 cases per 100,000 people nationally.

Ibrahim Avcil of the Hackney Refugee Forum referred to the borough’s illegal immigrants as its “invisible people” and claimed that there are thousands of people, many of whom are infected with TB, “who are invisible to the authorities”.

Explaining why Hackney has such a high rate of TB, Mr Avcil said: “The most important thing is that Hackney has a very, very high population of refugees and immigrants.

“Neither the council nor the Primary Care Trust has any policy to help these people with their health concerns,” he said.

Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, raised the issue in Parliament last week.

“In my lifetime, TB was virtually eradicated,” she told the House of Commons. “In contrast, England now has one of the highest rates of TB in the Western world, and in recent years Hackney has consistently had one of the highest rates in England,” she said.

She added: “Tuberculosis is one of the most serious public health issues facing Hackney,” and that because the disease affects socially excluded groups like immigrants, sex-workers, and the homeless, it is too easy for it to be ignored.

Nathaniel Matthews, a lawyer at the Hackney Community Law Centre, said many of his clients were “living in real slum conditions”, with no water or gas, comparable to those of the nineteenth century. He said that if the rest of the country were similar to Hackney, “then it could be a major national crisis.”

The release of the figures coincides with World TB Day, which took place this week. They show that the number of cases in London rose by two per cent compared with last year. There were 125 new recorded cases in Hackney in 2008.

A medical worker who works with TB patients in the borough has refuted Mr Avcil’s claims: “He’d be surrounded by dead bodies, if it were left untreated for long enough,” she told the Hackney Post.

She also made it clear that the Primary Care Trust is committed to treating those with TB wherever they come from and wherever they are.

“The PCT has recently created a post involving outreach work related specifically to TB. His remit is to get out there, find the squats and treat people. Mostly, these people with TB end up being brought to us through A & E. We’re trying to get to them before that.

“We don’t see it as our role to notify the authorities,” she added.

A spokesman for the Department of Health confirmed this approach as official government policy, saying: “The NHS is not duty bound to inform the police or any other authority if they treat suspected illegal immigrants.

“The risk to the public health of a disease like TB being allowed to spread without treatment outweighs any perceived benefits there might be associated with tracking down or deporting illegal immigrants.”

Case study

Alan, 46, is a former set designer from Hackney Downs. He discovered he had tuberculosis nearly nine months ago after a friend called an ambulance and he was rushed to hospital.

He describes his symptoms as “complete muscle wastage”, “incredible tiredness and coughing up lots of spit”, but has no idea how he contracted the disease.

“It could have been a number of things. No-one that I know had it. But I was an alcoholic and was pretty run down anyway, so that’s probably the reason that I got it. It’s very difficult [to know] because it was such a gradual process.”

He says that his living conditions were poor, with damp in his flat, which experts say is a contributing factor for most cases of TB. “One day a friend phoned for an ambulance because I was so ill. When I was taken to A&E, the doctors weren’t surprised at all. There were quite a few TB patients in there at the same time,” he says.

“The treatment was quite simple. It was just antibiotics that apparently kicked in after two weeks. I’m still taking them until the end of this month - and that will be nine months, and the end of my treatment.

“But the TB service [at Homerton Hospital] didn’t just give me the drugs. They looked at the overall picture. The nurse got in touch with all the right people, including my landlord. They helped me to deal with all of my health issues.”

Names have been changed

TB or not TB?

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease that usually affects the lungs, but can affect any part of the body. It spreads when people with the infection cough, sneeze or talk and propel TB germs into the air - but usually requires prolonged close contact.

About 8,000 new cases are currently reported each year in the UK. Most cases occur in major cities, particularly in London.

One-third of the world’s population is currently infected with TB.

Symptoms include a persistent cough, night sweats or fever, weight loss, tiredness and coughing up blood.

The disease is curable with a combination of specific antibiotics, but treatment must continue for at least six months.

Left untreated, anybody with active TB will infect an average of between 10 and 15 people every year.

In a grubby brick building on Hackney’s Murder Mile, Ben Way is inconspicuous among the hordes of teenagers. Fresh faced and dressed in a fashionable t-shirt, his appearance masks the fact that he is actually in his twenties – and a multimillionaire.

When he was 17, Way made £25m from a business he started in his bedroom. But because he remembered how it felt to be told he would never make anything of himself and not to have enough cash in his pocket for a tube ticket, Way was determined to spend at least some of his money helping other young people.

Now 28, Way swapped Mayfair for Murder Mile three years ago in the first ever episode of Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire. For 10 days, the internet entrepreneur lived undercover in a shared flat on a Hackney estate, earned his keep in a breaker’s yard and volunteered at the Pedro Club on Rushmore Road. In one of the most violent areas of London, he was taught how to defuse fights by club manager Ufu Niazi, and learned how to command teenagers’ respect from champion boxer turned outreach worker James Cook.

When Way slipped back into his suit and revealed his true identity, he signed three cheques: £20,000 for Niazi to invest in the Pedro Club, £10,000 to launch the career of a young fashion designer called Wayne and £10,000 for Cook to have a white wedding. But what effect did the money have on life in this corner of Clapton once the cameras stopped rolling?

Inside the Pedro Club, the new recording studio built with Way’s donation is sitting empty. “It was what I wanted to do with the money and what Ben wanted to do with the money, and the idea was to provide a rentable facility to help the club sustain itself,” says Niazi. However, broken equipment means the studio has had to be taken out of action until the centre can afford to repair it.

“We are still paying bills with no money coming in,” Cook admits. “Some of the young people who come through the doors don’t care if they live to see next week, and the police want us to open seven days a week because we are keeping kids off the streets and out of trouble. We may have to close for a few months to sort out funding. It’s really hard, but we won’t consider failing.”

Last year Way once again stepped in to save the failing club, launching 1000Bricks.com in a bid to raise £100,000. The website sells advertising space on bricks in the club’s wall. “It didn’t take off,” he sighs. “We put a lot of money and effort into getting it up and running, but we struggled to get media support. It’s a great shame.”

The fledgling fashion business that Way invested in during The Secret Millionaire also failed to take flight. After the show, teenage designer Wayne went from selling his clothes on the street to seeing them on the rails in high street shops, but he has since dropped out of the fashion business.

“We ended up giving a lot more investment and a lot more help to Wayne after the show,” says Way. “It was probably a bit too much for him, and he’s gone on to do some other design projects now. Wayne was the biggest financial risk that I took, but what I hope is that it’s given him a taster of what’s possible and that he might return to fashion in the future.”

But one lasting legacy of the show was James Cook’s wedding to his patient fiancée, who had been waiting to tie the knot for 19 years. “I can’t go anywhere now without people congratulating me on finally getting married,” Cook laughs. Way funded the white wedding to acknowledge Cook’s hard work in Hackney. “It was an amazing wedding and a beautiful day, although quite hard giving my best man speech after only having known James for eight weeks,” says Way. It wasn’t the only recognition Cook received for his efforts: in 2007 he was awarded an MBE for his work at the Pedro Club.

While the problems of the Murder Mile are not easily solved, the secret millionaire still believes that he did his bit to help with the money he donated. “It was what it was, and you can’t have any regrets in life. I went into this knowing that as long as I was true to myself, I would be fine. I just wanted to help. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t still be involved now.”

For the people behind the Pedro Club, Way’s intervention was about more than the sum on the cheque. “The programme did make a difference, but not for the reasons we perhaps expected it to,” says Niazi. “It highlighted the hard work that goes on in every community, up and down the country, and gave normal people a bit of recognition.

“I live on the Murder Mile, and slowly but surely, the violence here is diminishing. It’s a testament to the hard work that’s happened in Hackney, but that work was happening long before The Secret Millionaire arrived. Ben’s help has just made things a little bit easier.”

“I have a lot of male energy,” explains 30-year-old Esien, with a girlish giggle. “The fear that other female comics talk about, I’ve never felt. I come on stage and bully the audience. It’s oestrogen talking when people want to help the crowd have a good time, but I want to go out there and sort them out so that they have no choice but to laugh.”

Born into a large Nigerian family in Hackney, Esien always played boys in her school shows and gave what she calls the best performance of her drama school days as libertine lothario Don Juan. But despite spending her childhood perfecting cheeky impressions of her relatives, she came to comedy only after being coaxed into an impromptu stand-up set at the Hackney Empire. Now, the self-confessed tomboy is a small screen fixture, starring in BBC sketch show Little Miss Jocelyn, named after the comedian herself, and hidden camera comedy 3 Non Blondes.

But Esien still feels most at home in the haunts where she first found humour. She lives in De Beauvoir, “but not the posh bit”, and favours East End entertainment over West End wonders. “In the last 10 years, I’ve seen almost every show at the Hackney Empire,” she says. “They automatically put my name down now because I just turn up. I loved Anansi and the Magic Mirror, and I’m going to see The Hounding of David Oluwale next.” She will become an even more familiar face at the Empire this week when she begins rehearsals for its new production of The Vagina Monologues. “I love TV, but theatre is the reason I started acting. The stage is my natural habitat,” she smiles. “The Vagina Monologues has a great cast, including Sharon D. Clarke and Jessie Wallace, and it’s nice to join that girls’ brigade.”

Despite this foray into femininity, Esien credits her comedy career to a series of male muses: Jerry Lewis, Steve Martin, Jim Carrey, Eddie Murphy, and one Barack Obama. “President Obama,” she corrects herself quickly. “I feel disrespectful when I say Barack. He has really, really, really inspired me. I’m pretending he’s my prime minister but he lives in another country.”

Esien does not expect this daydream to become reality anytime soon. “In this country, people still struggle with seeing black people in certain positions,” she says. “I can’t see us having a black prime minister, not for many years. In America, they have police shows where the black guy is the head of the Vice Squad, not the head of the Multicultural Department of Ethnic Minorities Squad. Someone can come from the streets there and become a multimillionaire rapper. But you don’t see any of that happening here.”

Despite this “greater openness” in America, Esien was the first black female on either side of the Atlantic to secure her own television sketch show. “I’d always assumed there must have been someone in the States who’d got there before me,” she says. “I only found out that I was the first just before the show came out. It’s ridiculous, but very exciting. I need to speak to the Guinness Book of Records, actually. Mum and dad would be proud if I got in there. But they’ll probably ask how many eggs I can eat in a minute or something.”

Breaking international records has caused a few cracks to appear on home turf, however. Gina Yashere, a British comedian brought up in a Nigerian family in Finsbury Park, has complained that the success of Esien’s television show means that she will never get one herself “because they’ve got their ‘black female comedian’ token slot filled”.

“I know what she means,” responds Esien carefully, “but I don’t think it’s true. The population of the UK is extremely diverse, and yes, TV doesn’t represent that. I got my show three years ago, and there haven’t been any others since. But I hope I’ve opened doors and allowed more people to see what’s possible.”

Yashere swapped London for Los Angeles in a bid to boost her comedy career, but despite her penchant for the American president, Esien has no plans to trade Hackney for Hollywood. “I love the diversity, the energy and the noise here,” she says. When she’s not flexing her funny bones, Esien zips around Hackney on her “Mary Poppins bike” and frequents Dalston’s Turkish eateries “because they’re open until 5am and they serve alcohol. What more could you ask for?”

Plenty of the characters she meets in these Hackney haunts end up on the stage and screen with her. “I have a brain that’s like a sponge, and also a bit like a sieve,” she giggles. “I get inspiration from people I’ve met on the bus, on the train, in shops, in my own family. But no one ever recognises themselves on TV. It’s individual quirks and ticks that I’m interested in, not the whole character.”

Once the lights dim on The Vagina Monologues, Esien will be scouring the streets for more humorous habits to write into a new series for the BBC, a Little Miss Jocelyn live show, and another hidden camera programme. “I need counselling and a glass of sherry for taking on so much,” she laughs. “Any minute now there’ll be a phone call to tell me the delivery dates for these projects, and I’ll have to work like mad towards them. But I know I can do it. After Obama, anything’s possible.”

The portrait of the playwright that hung above the desk on which he wrote his masterpieces is now up for auction to raise money for disadvantaged youth in Hackney.

It captures the Nobel Laureate playing cricket, the game he described as “better than sex” and “God’s greatest creation”.

The Pinter family has already received an anonymous bid of £4,000 for the portrait, but hopes it will fetch enough to buy a specially adapted minibus that costs up to £42,000 and will help special needs schools take their pupils on day trips.

Pinter died on Christmas Eve, aged 78, after a long battle with cancer.

Harry Burton, actor and cricketing colleague, said: “Lady Antonia [Fraser, Pinter's widow] has agreed to donate the painting for a game to recognise Harold’s love of cricket. We hope it can raise funds for disadvantaged kids in Hackney.”

Pinter was born in 1930, the son of Jewish immigrants who ran a tailor’s shop in Stoke Newington.
After being evacuated during the Second World War, he attended Hackney Downs School, where he played Romeo and Macbeth in the 1947 and 1948 productions of the play at the school.

The Birthday Party playwright was also a screenwriter, poet, political activist and novelist. One of his novels was an autobiographical piece about Hackney life which was eventually published in 1990 as The Dwarfs.

Michael Billington, Pinter’s official biographer told the Hackney Post that his birthplace “meant a huge amount to Harold. He was always loyal to Hackney.”

“The Homecoming is full of Hackney atmosphere and the language seems full of what I would call earthy, tough Hackney dialogue,” he said.

“He used to spend a lot of spare time in the local library and cafes. I think his life was saturated with Hackney.

“He owed a great debt to it.”

-  To place a bid for the portrait, e-mail pinter@lordstaverners.org

By Daniel Igra

A woman peeling and carving up an ox tongue. A man reading erotically charged descriptions of human slaughter. An audience squeaking plastic hamburgers and turkey drumsticks. In the dark underbelly of a pub called the Slaughtered Lamb. This was Hackney at its weirdest and arguably worst - certainly for the vegetarian who accompanied me. But at least there was plenty to laugh at.Ox Tales, a highlight of this month’s London Word Festival, was billed as an evening of “literary top-cuts and fleshy delights”, culminating in the aforementioned butchery demonstration. In truth literary tripe and fleshy disgust - especially when the aroma of cured tongue-meat filled the room - proved more appropriate descriptions, though there were some prime moments.

Among the offal on offer was a reading by Joseph D’Lacey, who took us to the gruesome abattoirs of Abyrne described in his novel Meat. If the graphic depictions of people being “spread-eagled on slabs” before having their testicles removed were not disturbing enough, D’Lacey’s evident excitement over his own text led me to fear for my safety sitting in the front row. This was a man with meat cleavers for arms after all. Particularly sinister were his squeaks on a plastic hamburger (handed out at the beginning of the evening) at the climax of each depraved passage.

D’Lacey’s alarming eroticism was returned to safer - albeit more boring - ground by Cockney poet Tim Wells, who read a piece about Guardian readers “bullying” their sausages in a greasy spoon somewhere in ‘orrible gentrified London. It wasn’t only the hackneyed theme that caused my attentions to stray. With his considerable girth and brown and cream brogue trotters, I was preoccupied by visions of D’Lacey butchering the man with his forearms.

Better attention was paid to Ross Raisin, a waiter at Smith’s of Smithfield (the restaurant renowned for its unusual meat dishes) and the author of celebrated novel God’s Own Country. The passage he read, told in the voice of the sociopathic son of a sheep farmer in the Yorkshire Moors, was lyrical and haunting And in Karen Hayley the evening had a charming compere, who, like all good hosts, started and failed to end a range of dubious anecdotes and jokes.

The night ended with chef Abigail Oborne holding aloft a gigantic slab of tongue before attacking it with a knife and serving it up as canapés. All the while an assistant read out yet another butchery-themed poem. Weird. And, as my vegetarian friend pointed out, time to go.

Video filmed and edited by: Daniel Igra and Oliver Shah

Tim Campbell, who won the job in Sir Alan Sugar’s company Amstrad in 2005, set up the Bright Ideas Trust last year and is now searching for young people with business ideas that need investment.

“A lot of people who had seen me on TV were asking me how to set up a business and I thought ‘how can we harness this energy and focus it into creating a business,’” Mr Campbell said.

“Many people think Hackney is full of knife wielding youngsters. But we were pleasantly surprised by the entrepreneurial energy in the borough.”

Mr Campbell was born in Plaistow in east London but he says that has always spent a lot of time in Hackney.

His company, The Bright Ideas Trust works in partnership with businesses in the borough and provides mentors and funding for 16-30 year olds who want to set up a business.

Fabien Souzandry, 21, was the first young business owner the trust helped. He launched his film making business V.OGRAPHICS in November last year.

He said: “I had the chance to pitch my idea to Tim last year, I was only supposed to have a 15 minute meeting but it lasted for an hour and 45 minutes.

“Before this I had never had a business plan, but Tim has helped me to find contacts and clients. Since then, I have done various jobs for big clients, including the BBC, MTV and the Teenage Cancer Trust.

“I didn’t want to be branded as someone who got free money so what drew me to this trust was that they invest in the business,” he said.

The trust has also invested in a local children’s bookshop and hair dressing salon.

The Marketing Manager of Bright Ideas, Justen Schafer said: “We don’t invest in social enterprises or charities. We just want commercially and financially viable ideas.
“People can get up to £25,000 loan or equity share. Because we are investing in the business we want it to be successful.”

Mr Campbell will be visiting Hackney in April to run a workshop at Hothouse arts centre in London Fields for people who have an idea they want to discuss.

Despite the gloomy economic outlook Mr Campbell said: “Now is a good time to start a business if you have a good idea. If you can survive through this, it is a lot easier when the economy picks up. There are definitely opportunities at the moment.”

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, said: “I fully support this new approach to business support with a model that moves away from handouts and grants and provides valuable bespoke support and mentoring.”

Mr Campbell said he hopes to take the scheme nationwide. “We need more entrepreneurs to get us out of the downturn,” he said. “Small businesses are at the heart of the economy.”

Photo: Fabien with Paul Humphries (left) and Tim Campbell (right)

Ted Gore, referee secretary for the Hackney & Leyton Sunday Football League, said: “Trouble tends to come with the kids’ games - that’s why I won’t referee them myself. When some bloke whacks someone else, more often than not it’s a parent getting worked up.”

His comments come after the FA’s launch of an initiative fronted by Hackney-born actor Ray Winstone to try and improve parental behaviour at matches.

The programme, called the Respect Parent Guide, was created after the Football Association’s research showed 7,000 young footballers across the country have stopped playing in the last two years because of pressure from the sidelines.

Mr Winstone said: “I can remember the enjoyment I got from playing football on Hackney Marshes as an 11-year-old kid. But I can also still remember hearing dads, who thought they knew more about soccer than anyone else, screaming and shouting from the touchlines.

“It must be a right headache to stand next to these mugs every week who are arguing over kids’ football. It’s tough on the referee and difficult for the other parents who are trying to enjoy the game.”

Johnny Walker, chairman of the Hackney & Leyton Sunday Football League, said that parents were just mimicking top flight managers by throwing tantrums at referees.

Mr Walker said: “There is always a problem when you get people on the touchline who think they’re Alex Ferguson. There are the usual spats, but we give them short shrift.”

He added: “I don’t think the FA realise how much pressure we’re under. The recent Man United vs Fulham game [which saw Paul Scholes and Wayne Rooney sent off] is the typical example. Of course Premiership misbehaviour filters down, and then we’re left to pick up the pieces.”

An FA spokesman disagreed and said the campaign showed it was dedicated to tackling the problem head-on.

He said: “Our new campaign has been prompted by the grass roots to try and improve parental behaviour on the touchline. I guess sometimes bad behaviour might filter down from the Premiership, but the FA is trying to make football a fun and enjoyable experience for all children.”

Families from Nigeria and the Caribbean are suffering the effects of the credit crunch as cash-strapped relatives in Hackney are forced to wire less money home.

Money transfer shops in the borough have reported an average fall in business of 10 per cent, with some putting the figure as high as twice that, an investigation by the Hackney Post can reveal.

While the drop in remittances is hitting individual families reliant on regular packages from relatives living in east London, a leading development consultancy firm warned the fall could also have “very big” long-term effects on developing countries, particularly Africa.

The manager of DT & T Money Transfer, on Kingsland Road, said business had fallen by up to 20 per cent since January.

Ade Amina said: “There’s been a real drop in trade. It’s mainly people who normally send money to Nigeria and the US. “People will be struggling back in these countries without this money.”

Maxine Johnson, of Swift Cash, also on Kingsland Road, said her shop had also seen a marked fall in remittances to the Caribbean, its biggest market.

“At the moment transfers to a few Caribbean countries are definitely lower.

“I know people who were sending £200 a few months ago and have now been forced to send over £150 or less.

One customer who has been forced to cut back his money transfers was Mark Wilson, a technician from Homerton. Mr Wilson, who moved to the UK from Jamaica several years ago, wires a weekly remittance to his mother, who still lives on the Caribbean island.

He said: “I’m struggling to send £40 a week to my mum every week, whereas before it was £60. “The credit crunch has hit me really bad and now it’s affecting my mum.”

He added: “I’m looking for more work. But ultimately I hope to go back to Jamaica - but it’s not so easy.

One country likely to be particularly hit by the fall in remittances is Nigeria, where nearly £500m was wired from the UK in 2007.

Ade Adeshina, chief executive of the O-Bay Community Trust for Nigerians, said the economic slowdown was not only endangering people’s livelihoods but straining relations between relatives thousands of miles apart.

“I have given counselling to a few couples who are on the verge of divorce.  It’s difficult for people out there to believe what is going on here. They can’t understand why their husbands or wives are not sending the same amount of money back.

“It has huge knock-on effects on a family if it is no longer receiving money. Nigeria has no social security system so people are reliant on this money being sent through.”

Chris Gerrard, remittances expert at Developing Markets Associates, said the fall would have a major impact on developing economies.

“Things will be clearer by the end of this year; the situation is now quite unclear. But I think the fall in percentage terms for a country like Nigeria will be 10 per cent, which is very high.”

Chanda, who trains at the Crown and Manor boxing club in Hackney, was beaten on points by Martin Ward number three in the world.

Coach Steve Kipps said that Ward spat out his mouth guard twice during the bout in order to gain rest periods from the referee to refit his guard. On both occasions Ward had been on the receiving end of a flurry of blows from Chanda.

Chanda’s coach Steve Kipps said: “There was dirty tactics. He spat his gum shield out after getting hit with come good combinations. When he went back to his corner he took an age to wash it out.”

According to ABA rules a boxer is disqualified if they spit out their guard three times.

Mr Kipps said that Chanda could keep his head held high, despite the loss.

“He was up against a really good boy. I’ll be very surprised if he doesn’t go on to win the whole thing.”

Shakespeare Ward Adventure Playground has received four complaints from worried parents since a dispersal zone was implemented in the area. They all expressed concerns about the “intimidation tactics” used by police.

The zone was introduced in August after a series of attacks by the ‘Soldiers of Shakespeare’ gang on Butterfield Green, in Clissold.

Under the scheme, police have the power to disperse gangs and forcibly remove aggressive youths who are from elsewhere in London.

One play worker claimed he witnessed a police officer pushing a boy against a playground wall without any provocation.

Wesley Lucas said: “I came out and saw the officer with his hand up against his chest. As soon as he saw me he took his hand away.

“The boy then started searching his own pockets without a word from the officer. He looked upset.

“I told the officer the guy was completely innocent. I know the community and I know his mother. This guy was not a troublemaker.”

The boy’s mother Annette said that she was distressed by the alleged incident: “My son was very very upset and so was I. The way in which they search children is a form of intimidation.

“The police should be more wary. It’s a play centre with supervised staff. They should have gone in there and identified themselves to the staff.”

The youth centre has put up a poster informing children of their rights if they are stopped by the police.

Children are advised that police officers must have reasonable grounds for suspecting possession of drugs, weapons or stolen goods to use stop and search powers.

Mr Lucas said that witnessing the heavy-handed tactics of the police prompted him to act.

Tony Bamgbad, 12, who has been stopped five times, said that he did not understand why he had been targeted by police, and Youssef, 12, said: “They stop kids for no reason.”

Mr Lucas claimed that the behaviour of police officers was damaging children’s perceptions of authority.

He said: “How are children meant to give respect when basically the police are acting the way they do?”

“Their approach is to say ‘Right we’re here, be afraid of us,’” he said. “Whilst that works in certain situations it doesn’t work when you’re approaching a child that has done nothing wrong.”

The play area has been a popular attraction for Hackney children for nearly three decades. It features climbing frames, zip wires and cargo nets. There is also a hut that contains computers and arts materials for children to use.

Mr Lucas has asked the police to arrange a question answer session between police officers and children who visit the playground.

Stoke Newington police were unavailable for comment. However a spokesperson for Hackney police said: “Our feedback from residents is that the dispersal order has been a great success. The dispersal order was extended at the request of the residents.”