A mission to build community wealth.

An Economy for All

Hackney is a great place to live. But like much of the UK, it also faces growing inequality. Our economy unfairly benefits the wealthy.

Despite new housing, schools and other activities to build local wealth, Hackney remains ranked the 7th most deprived area in the country. Nearly 20% of of local households are ‘income deprived’, meaning they are either out of work or on low earnings with 8% of our 16 – 65 population no qualifications.

Our local economy is broken; it has to change. At the moment, profits are being extracted by companies and people who already have well beyond their fair share.

My economic plan takes a new approach to building wealth. It is driven by residents, for residents.

Community wealth building is a strategy to create more local jobs for local people and redirect wealth back into the local area. It puts control of a fair economy for Hackney – and the benefits of that economy – back into the hands of our community.

By taking this approach, I offer a solution to the economic challenges we face. We can learn from pioneers in other areas such as Cleveland, Ohio, Mondragon in Spain and more recently in Preston, UK.

These local authorities looked at where and how they were spending money. They then identified practical steps to change their economy for the benefit of local people based on the four principles of:

Plural ownership of the economy – this means more of our community will participate in deciding how resources are shared.They will also have more ownership of local enterprises.
Making financial power work for local places – invest in local businesses within the community, for example, through community banks.
Creating fair employment and just labour markets – hire and train local people and pay Living Wages.
Progressive procurement of goods and services – local businesses and organisations hire talent and get supplies from within the community. For example from local shops.

This created a new ‘local money flow’ so that profits stopped leaking out of the area into multinational corporations. Instead, it created new jobs filled by new talent. This is community wealth building in action.

It is a resilient – and established – model of local economic development proven to help mitigate the extreme inequalities created by our economy.

It tackles the vulnerabilities caused by overreliance on international markets..

It offers a way to address economic, environmental and social challenges by doing some good joined-up thinking in Hackney. For example, community owned businesses and cooperatives providing supplies for local organisations. It’s about win, win, win solutions.

I want to see this in Hackney. We can drive new development and put the environment front and centre of our economy.

And we will do it. The Green Party will:

Work with our large institutions such as Homerton Hospital, Learning Trust and Hackney Police as pioneers in investors in our local economy and workforce. They will do this by committing to procure goods and services from local businesses, train and employing local people and re-investing any surplus back into the local economy.
Support the transfer of council property and land into the hands of the community, to provide a foundation for future local initiatives and enterprises.
Champion the community right to bid – so that the people of Hackney can nominate buildings or land as having ‘community value’. This means the community can own and manage our own public services.
Ensure there is good quality vocational training in core skills, particularly for those without access to further education and training.
Ensure crucial community services are a part of all new retail and workspace developments. We will prioritise money and debt advice services, welfare rights and legal advice, and ethical financial services that will help local enterprises.
Ensure locally owned and managed small businesses are given proper financial support and are protected from being priced out of the area by large corporations. We will do this through financial incentives such as rate relief, cap on out-of-borough large business, fit for purpose leases, and ensuring 25% of business units are allocated for genuinely affordable rents.
Ringfence use of new retail spaces to deliver a programme of Hackney Community Wealth Building
To help resource this we will ring-fence of participatory budgets, so that local people have a say in how resources are used in their community.

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