Barking and Dagenham Council has won two awards and been highly commended in another category at the prestigious Local Government Chronicle (LGC) Awards on Wednesday.

As well as being named the winner of the Driving Growth award, the council took home the top title of Council of Year at the 22nd annual awards ceremony, which was held at Grosvenor House, London on 21 March.

A special reception was held at the Civic Centre in Dagenham on Monday night to reveal more details about the Onside Future Youth Zone that opens in 2019.

History will be made when the centre officially opens in Barking and Dagenham as the Youth Zone will be the first of its kind in London.

Building work has already got underway after West Ham captain Mark Noble was among a number of people who helped put a giant spade into the ground to officially start work at a ground-breaking ceremony back in January.

A new order which will clamp down on anti-social behaviour is being introduced in Barking Town Centre.

The Public Space Protection Order (PSPO), which went live today (Monday 19 March), will cover behaviour such as drinking alcohol in a public place, to spitting, begging, and urinating. The PSPO will target those engaging in behaviour which causes residents and other users of the area harassment, alarm or distress.

The order means council enforcement officers and the police will have new powers to hand out £100 fixed penalty notices on the spot.

Chair yoga and healthy cookery classes are just two of the many free classes available to residents in the borough, as Every One Every Day publishes its latest programme of events.

Over the next eight weeks, there will be more than 50 free community get togethers arranged in Barking and Dagenham from cooking, making, learning or growing, to fixing, trading, sharing or eating.

Classes include discovering how to take great photographs, setting up a play street or becoming a bee keeper.

Barking and Dagenham youngsters have unveiled their vision for the OnSide Future Youth Zone with specially-designed hoardings at the centre’s Parsloes Park site.

A total of eight caravans and seven vehicles have left the Abbey Retail Park in Barking, following an inspection by officers from Barking and Dagenham Council in conjunction with the council funded Estates Police Team.

The officers visited the site on 1 March 2018, where they discovered the collection of vehicles alongside dumped bulky waste, wood and rubble.

It was agreed by the individuals interviewed that they would leave the site once weather conditions improved, and the travellers had indeed vacated the land when officers visited the following day.

Barking and Dagenham were left celebrating a major milestone after receiving the Mayor’s Cultural Impact Award at the London Borough of Culture awards on Tuesday.

The Mayor of London set a challenge for every borough in London to propose a year-long programme of world-class cultural events and initiatives and developed a plan to make culture an integral part of the borough’s future.

New electric vehicle charge points are being installed at 13 locations across Barking and Dagenham in a bid to encourage residents to switch to the greener form of transport.

The scheme is part of Source London, a capital-wide initiative which allows people to charge their electric automobiles at various sites including Dagenham Heathway, Longbridge Road, and Upney Lane.

The network plays a crucial role in encouraging the uptake of electric vehicles and contributing to the Mayor of London’s vision to improve the capital’s air quality.

The challenge was to tackle some of the biggest gender equality issues and it proved to be a weekend to remember for the winning team NOYO (Not on Your Own) at the Barking and Dagenham Gender Equality Hackathon.

The event which was held at the Barking Learning Centre (BLC) on 3 and 4 February focused on people of all ages and backgrounds from across London to find innovative solutions to two of the biggest gender issues – employment and safety and it proved to be a major success.

Barking and Dagenham secondary schools are performing above average in GCSE English and maths, according to the latest league tables that have been published.

Overall 43.1 per cent of the borough’s students achieved a Grade 5 or above in English language, English literature, and mathematics GCSEs, compared to a national average of 39.6pc.

The results are based on pupils who were the first to sit the new, tougher GCSEs in English and maths, which are graded 9 to 1 – with 9 being the highest – rather than the old A* to G method.