Hackney's development is not just a local concern

According to an article in the Financial Times Hackney Council is "teaming up with landlords, architects and property developers to mastermind a 'fashion hub'..." building on the success of the Burberry factory outlet in Chatham Place.

The target, it seems, is Chinese cash. The article said many of the 600,000 shoppers per year who visit the Burberry store are Asian. But Councillor Guy Nicholson, Hackney council cabinet member for regeneration said: "Pretty much none of those visitors remain and start to engage in the local economy in any way."

Hole in Council's economic analysis - Mayor in the Economist

Local authorities were supposed to have new Local Economic Assessments in place by April 2010. But the last time it was asked, Hackney Council said it hadn't got one, and wouldn't have one until August 2010.

(Meanwhile, Mayor Jules Pipe happily chats to the Economist about the borough's economic situation in the magazine's latest edition. Hackney residents should be getting jobs in coffee shops if they want to benefit from the Olympics. The Economist reports: "His (Jules Pipe's) main longer-term hope lies with the broadcasting and media centres in the Olympic Park. Hackney is home to lots of small firms in “creative” industries, from post-production work for Hollywood studios to printing and advertising, for which the media centre could become a new base. That in turn would spawn work in nearby coffee shops and so forth.")

The council received a Freedom of Information request for its draft Local Economic Assessment in February from Labour activist Jed Keenan.

The council's response was: "The Local Economic Assessment is a statutory duty placed on all local governments arising from the Local Government and Construction Act (2009). This requires each local authority to undertake a detailed study of the dynamics of the local economy and its connections with the sub-region and beyond.

"Due to difficulties in recruiting to the post of Policy Adviser - Social and Economic Affairs and subsequently the timings of data analysis being done at the sub-regional level there has been a delay in delivery. We are now looking at an interim report by the end of August 2010."

Jed Keenan told Blood and Property: "A decent economic idea would be a good idea for a £1,000,000,000/annum organisation but so what, exposure of the absence of a good idea makes no difference if the effectiveness of the governance doesn't make a good idea into a good set of actions." (Jed likes long complicated sentences!)

So what is the Local Economic Assessment? According to the Local Government Improvement and Development website the LEA should: "Provide local authorities and stakeholders with an understanding of how economic conditions and forces shape places. That understanding needs to inform: policy, priorities, resource allocation and actions."

It should: "Reflect the economic character of an area..."

It should: "Describe the economic forces and factors affecting your area to inform policy and action..."

All of which sound like they might be useful as the council faces 25% cuts and the worst economic climate since the Great Depression.

Meanwhile Keenan has been one of the few members of Hackney's Labour party to provide any scrutiny of the borough's leadership. This is usually done with a view to encouraging others to take part in the process: a recent exchange in the Hackney Citizen

In the Citizen and more recently in response to Cllr Louisa Thomson's piece in Progress about Community Organisers, Keenan has criticised the council's economic policy, particularly in relation to the borough's actions in relation to street markets.

In Progress he says that the 500 empty pitches in Hackney's street markets are "a black hole on the Council’s accounts but the corporate plan is to increase the charges of the existing traders by 50%."

He points out that: "There’s a proper big budget to spend but you can guess how that is to be spent, yep on municipal furniture, signage, branding, and more studies and consultations."

And he then threatens to take up David Cameron's offer to entrepreneurial locals: "So when the Tory Prime Minister says: ‘I want other forward-thinking, entrepreneurial, community-minded people and neighbourhoods in our country to come forward and ask for the same freedoms, the same support too. If you’ve got an idea to make life better, if you want to improve your local area, don’t just think about it – tell us what you want to do and we will try and give you the tools to make this happen.’ Do you think that he would order the Council to hand over governance of the Street Markets Section, currently insanely within the Parking Department, to me and the Traders Associations and social enterprises training and supporting tenants and residents of social housing to become market traders?"

Also, read Beecholme and Environs to find out how the Clapton Tramshed dispute is progressing. Has it already led to Labour figures such as Guy Nicholson and Ian Rathbone falling out? The piece also provides some interesting FOI material on the number of Hackney pupils forced to go to school in Waltham Forest due to a shortage of places in the borough. Will building even more homes help... may be there's some solid economic plan to underpin this? Something like a Local Economic Assessment....

Hackney - a worklessness miracle?

Earlier this month the Office of National Statistics published Hackney's worklessness figures.

They weren't too bad - the unexplained miracle continues. The workless of Hackney still seem to be finding their way back to work at a surprising speed.

All this during a period when the rest of the country was on the brink of financial collapse with jobs being lost. In contrast, figures show that, in Hackney the population of economically inactive residents shrank. It fell by about 2,900 people (from 28.7% of the working population to 26.6%).

The recession, it seems, has had the opposite effect in Hackney as it has in most other parts of the UK. This seemed to be further confirmed by the publication, yesterday, of the workless households figures ( Work and worklessness among households Statistical Bulletin - August 2009 and 26/08/09 News Release - Half a million more working-age people in workless households).

These show that the North East has over-taken Inner London as the place with the highest rate of worklessness - it now has 23% of homes with all employment age residents out of work. Meanwhile Inner London's level of workless households is 22.9%, the second most concentrated are of household worklessness in the UK. This is down on the same time last year (Work and worklessness among households - August 2007 ) when 23.9% of Inner London homes were workless.

Nationally, the ONS figures for workless homes are the worst they have been - possibly since records began - showing that one in six UK households is unemployed - at least that's according to this interpretation provided by the BBC yesterday.

But not in Inner London, and it can only be supposed that Hackney has bucked the trend here too. Back in 2007 Hackney had the second worst level of workless households of all inner London Boroughs (26%). Worse than Newham (27%) and equal to Tower Hamlets (26%) and, unexpectedly, the next worst was Kensington and Chelsea (23%) - (That's according to (Table 2(iii) Working-age people by region and combined economic activity status of household)

So is Hackney like China? Powering ahead and "decoupling" from the rest of the developed world? Not according to Cllr Guy Nicholson, cabinet member for regeneration and the Olympic Games:

"In terms of Hackney’s economic development strategy, the borough has not ‘decoupled’ from the UK’s, and specifically London’s economic direction of travel. Hackney Council will continue to ensure the growth and dynamism of a range of economic sectors within the borough. Key sector are: Servicing for the City, High Value Manufacturing, Retail, Hospitality and Entertainment,Creative Sectors."

He said: "The recession has impacted upon Hackney in terms of an increase in JSA claimants. However, the borough has not been affected any more than the UK as a whole. Since September 2008, the proportion of the population of Hackney claiming JSA increased by 1.7%, compared to an increase of 1.6% in Britain as a whole. However, Hackney started from a considerably higher baseline in terms of the proportion of the population already claiming JSA.

"As discussed above, Hackney’s employment rate has increased significantly over the past few years. The gap between London’s and Hackney’s employment rate has decreased from 15.1% in Q4 05/06 to 3.4% in Q3 08/09. This is a significant achievement in the context of the high levels of multiple deprivation which continue to exist in Hackney. Due to the time-lag in the employment rate data, it is as yet unclear how the increase in JSA claimants will impact upon the employment rate in the borough."