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The Town Hall has evicted five households from their council homes during the past two years because of gang-related activity, including drug dealing, the Tribune can reveal.

There were two evictions in Clerkenwell and one in Canonbury in 2014, followed by the eviction of two further families from council homes in Angel and Clerkenwell last year. Drugs and anti-social behaviour played a role in every eviction, Councillor Paul Convery, Islington’s community safety chief, said.

In four out of five cases, all those thrown out were adults. In one case, there was a teenage dependent who was evicted along with his siblings and parents.

Cllr Convery said of the latter case: “There were two teenagers, legally adults, who were gang members, and a younger sibling. This was a very persistent problem household, extremely disruptive. Every form of control, injunctions, court orders, all had been applied. The parents were unable to control their kids, they were condoning the behaviour.”

Asked whether such evictions could be seen as double punishment, in addition to tenants’ criminal convictions, Cllr Convery said: “We are not evicting people for being gang members, but because their presence is persistently disruptive. People coming all hours of the day, people buying drugs and displaying chaotic and intimidatory behaviour – those are the grounds for eviction.

“We have a legal duty to other residents. We are protecting the people that are suffering from a small number of high-impact households. It also reduces crime. We are not applying an additional penalty and we have to convince the court. It’s not us that takes the final decision.”

Police use eviction orders, in partnership with the council, to clamp down on young people involved in gang crime. But Cllr Convery said they rarely, if ever, lead to an eviction.

“The number of eviction that we’ve made in gang-related things is relatively low, and that’s quite a positive story,” he said. “It’s the credible threat of eviction which very often produces a desired change in behaviour.

“We have dozens of notices of suspended possession and it’s a handful of instances where we will go the whole hog. Not where young children are involved, because that’s just going to make the situation worse, in the case of school-age children particularly.”

Once evicted, responsibility for seeking new accommodation lies with the evicted household. This is because, through the actions of one or more of the family, they have made themselves “intentionally homeless”, the Town Hall said.

Cllr Convery said he does not believe an eviction pushes people further into criminality, because these households are more likely to be faced with having to move out of London, away from their criminal networks.

“Even if that [criminality] would persist, it’s likely to be in a place that doesn’t have the concentration of criminality that we’re facing,” he added. “We have a small group of persistent offenders in the same place and have the same associations. You get a clustering effect.

“If a family leaves Islington and goes to Eastbourne or Hemel Hempstead, for example, it’s pretty likely to be a place that doesn’t have established criminal connections for them. In most instances they would have to get out of the crime business.”