Clean air should surely be a basic human right – for us, our children and for future generations. Right now in London we are living in illegal levels of air pollution.

By the end of January 2018 the city had already exceeded recommend EU air quality…

Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, has taken the next step towards divesting the London Pension Fund from fossil fuels, and he’s called on other London Boroughs to do the same. This is good news, but there’s still lots to do to get the commitments we need and to build the fairer, cleaner Hackney and London we want to see.

A few things you can do to get involved - no contribution is too small ...

Sign the petition to Divest…

The Landworker's Alliance and Growing Communities have launched a series of practical proposals, accompanied by illustrative case studies, for a scheme to dramatically increase local fruit and vegetable production following…

An alliance of farming and environmental groups are calling for the government to give special protection to small and medium sized farms in its new Agriculture Bill. The government's consultation on the future of food, farming and the environment is open until the 8th May and you can have your say



This is an unmissable opportunity to feed into…

Image: Fairtrade Foundation

Celebrations of Fairtrade Fortnight in Hackney were made extra special this year as, thanks to a grant from Hackney Council, we were able to ‘buy in’  presentations from Ketra Kyosiimire, a visiting female coffee producer from Uganda who gave interesting, illustrated talks on how coffee is grown and how fairtrade benefits the…

Members of the East End Trades Guild will meet the Hackney and Tower Hamlets mayors on Tuesday 13 March and ask them to commit to their agenda for affordable workspace and a London Living Rent.

The manifesto calls on councils across the capital to:

• Recognise Community Value of small and micro business to boroughs’…

Mayor Philip Glanville invited representatives of Hackney's social enterprise sector to the Town Hall in February to present the results of a consultation with more than 250 SEs to create a Social Enterprise Manifesto for Hackney. 

The manifesto is full of ideas on how Hackney Council can support recognition and development of the sector.  It highlight three strategic aims for the sector locally: promoting awareness & understanding of social enterprise, building…

Recently, we have seen the demise of the outsourcing mogul Carillion under a £1.5bn debt pile with a possible loss of up to 20,000 jobs in the UK. This was followed 2 weeks later by profit warnings of another outsourcing giant, Capita, whose share value plummeted by nearly 50%, wiping £1.5bn of its stock market value. The process of outsourcing public services started under the Thatcher years, but accelerated under the Blair-Brown years with the private/public financing initiatives.…

Hackney Fixers hosted a busy day of fixing on 3^rd February at the Redmond Centre, with over 50 people coming for help with their ailing electrical equipment and clothing.  One happy lady, Elizabeth, asked for “an extra big smile” to be drawn on the fixing log, she was so pleased to have her phone working again!

We realised with a start that this was…

Following on from last year’s success North London Waste Authority (NLWA) and environmental charity Groundwork London have joined forces to run the London Upcycling Competition 2017.

North Londoners are invited to enter the London Upcycling…

 After green washing and blue washing – using a UN logo to signpost sustainability without doing much – the term SDG washing points to businesses that use the Sustainable Development Goals to market their positive contribution to some SDGs while ignoring their negative impact on others. For example, a car company may market their electric cars as saving the climate (SDG 13↑). Yet, the cobalt in their batteries may be mined by…

Sustainable Hackney has decided on an additional work stream.  We hope to work with interested parties and organisations wanting to support and encourage educational establishments in Hackney to put sustainability at the heart of what they do and towards Hackney schools adopting the Sustainable Schools Framework.…

Plans for a new incinerator at Edmonton got development consent from the government last week.  The current incinerator will reach the end of it's useful life in 2025 and it's replacement is now apparently planned with even more capacity to take waste from other parts of London.  

Paying for the capital costs of the new plant will put waste disposal costs in…

A useful report from Regeneris: Capital Spread: Mapping the GLA's regeneration spend 2008-2016. 

£142m was allocated through four major regeneration grant funds:  the Outer London Fund (OLF), the Mayor's Regeneration Fund (MRF), the High Streets Fund (HSF) and the London Regeneration Fund (LRF). 

Haringey and Croydon…

Where is London's economy? - take a look at Mark Brearley's analysis of just how many of London job's are outside the central area and how important safeguarding employment space is.  There needs to be a balance between land…

Don't forget to vote for your choice of London Mayor and GLA representatives on 5th May!

You've got three votes:

• One for your first and second choice of mayor
• Another for an assembly member to represent your local constituency (North-East London)
• A third to choose one of the 11 assembly members who represent the whole city

There's an interesting analysis of the green policies of the main mayoral candidates from Friends of…

Arriva will take over as the operator of the London Overground services from November 2016 including all the Overground services through Hackney.  The franchise will operate for 7 1/2 years with a possible additional two years.

The…

In "A good city has industry" Mark Brearley looks at how London is "eating itself" consuming the buildings, places and spaces that house our jobs for housing, threatening the very rich mix…