A race equality campaigner has cost taxpayers more than £1 million by bringing a string of discrimination claims – several of them against anti-racism groups.
Natasha Sivanandan has spent 25 years pursuing a series of tribunal cases, and has now secured her biggest victory with a £425,000 payout.
Even her own father, a distinguished campaigner against racism, has disowned her and accused her of bringing race relations into disrepute.
During her campaign she has qualified as a barrister so she can do her own legal work on the claims. At one point she was so busy that she took on an administrative assistant to help her.
In the most recent ruling, her six-figure payout came from Hackney council and Hackney Action for Racial Equality (HARE), an advice service which ceased operating partly as a result of her action.
Miss Sivanandan, 57, who has no children and has never married, lives in a £450,000 housing association three-bedroom house in Wood Green, north London, which was allocated to her after she complained of racism at a previous property. She is understood to be claiming income support and disability benefit.