Hackney asks residents to shape the borough plan for 2040

Hackney Council wants to know what residents think the borough should look like in 2040, and it has launched a campaign to collect the answers. It is called Hackney is Yours, and the borough’s Green mayor, Zoë Garbett, unveiled it.

Garbett’s starting point is that too many people in Hackney feel decisions get made without anyone listening to those affected. The council says the campaign is meant to give residents a central place in the way local decisions are reached.

What Hackney is Yours asks residents

Two consultation surveys sit at the centre of it. The short one is built for people with little time to spare and should take about three minutes. The longer version runs to roughly ten minutes and asks for more detail. Whichever residents pick, the council says the consultation closes in due course.

Alongside the surveys, the council is running a series of pop-ups and setting up a Citizens’ Assembly, which is new for Hackney.

What residents say through those routes is meant to inform two documents. The first is a Borough Plan, which will set out a vision for Hackney in 2040. The second is a local plan, which will govern land use across the borough for the next 15 years. Between them the two documents reach well past the end of this decade.

Planning and new developments in Hackney

Cllr Alastair Binnie-Lubbock, the cabinet member for planning, said new developments in the borough too often benefit developers’ profits rather than the residents who live around them.

Both surveys are on the council’s consultation website, where the rest of the Hackney is Yours material also sits.