At Hackney Council, we’re doing everything we can to deliver renewable energy and net zero locally, from our sector-leading work to rapidly expand our EV charging infrastructure, to installing solar panels on our council and community buildings, decarbonising our pension fund, our Green Homes programme and of course our ambitious plans for community energy. Not to mention our efforts ‘greening’ our environment.
Last week’s announcement from Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband, during Community Energy Fortnight, demonstrates Labour’s commitment to listen to and work jointly with Local Government in the drive towards net zero. Nationwide, Labour local authorities know that net zero is a target that must be achieved to secure the wellbeing of the planet and it must be delivered alongside social justice. The global scale can be overwhelming, but a strong and ambitious partnership between Central and Local Government is an essential tool in this fight. Most of us in Labour local government are also already more ambitious than the national 2040 target.
As we get closer to our collective goal, at a local level it means we will be able to walk, cycle or bus to work and school breathing more freely, without fear that air pollution is causing us more harm than good; it means that our neighbourhoods won’t become overheated in the summer which is not only uncomfortable, but poses risks to our own health as well as the health of our natural environment; and net zero will mean cheaper energy bills, from secure, clean and locally generated electricity, something which the cost of living crisis has proved we desperately need.
Hackney’s work with the Coop Party, London Councils, the LGA, Community Energy movement and most crucially Ed Miliband and the Shadow Climate Change and Net Zero team, demonstrates how local authorities can act as an incubator and innovator for the development of nationwide ideas to tackle the climate emergency. Labour’s recent announcement demonstrates the leadership’s commitment to supporting and facilitating local authorities to deliver change in their communities. We’ve emphasised the need for stable, long-term investment to unlock real change; Labour’s promise that GB Energy will make available up to £600m in funding for local authorities and up to £400m in low-interest loans each year for communities, directly answers this.
Labour’s Local Power Plan includes Hackney’s key asks and has directly responded to the Co-op Party’s campaign, putting communities and local authorities at the heart of their ambitions for a greener Britain, harnessing the potential that we know our communities are fizzing with. We have already started this journey in Hackney, with the Council's energy services arm, Hackney Light and Power, inspired by London's Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan, is delivering its first round of funding through its £300k community energy fund. This is empowering 14 local landmarks, including a church, gurdwara, wellness charity and seven schools, to develop their own bespoke carbon-saving projects such as solar panels, battery storage, insulation and heating controls. This is only the start for us and we are already committed to funding future rounds, but we could do so much more working with a Labour Government committed to Community Energy.
In the future, we hope to develop this work to put solar panels on roofs of housing estates, as we’re already doing with other council assets. We’re also exploring district heat networks - the Council already operates the Shoreditch Heat Network which serves the Wenlock Barn, Cranston and Fairbank estates, and is investigating the feasibility for two new areas: Woodberry Down and Colville.
As we know, the devil is in the detail and this latest announcement from the national party adds necessary detail to Labour’s mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower. It is brilliant to see that Ed and Keir have taken this opportunity to take another step forward in their devolution agenda and we in Hackney welcome it with open arms. Now we must ensure that regulatory barriers which currently cap progress on community energy, such as those highlighted by Power for People’s Local Electricity Bill as well as the subsidy control rules which are a growing concern in Hackney, are eradicated so we can truly unleash our potential for sustainable and affordable power.
Following this year's Community Energy Fortnight let's celebrate what's been achieved, and the pioneering potential 'energy' (pun intended) unleashed by Labour in this bold green, co-operative community vision for our future for how we deliver low carbon, low cost energy owned and powered by the people.
11 January, 2023
The Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition come to Hackney to 'Take Back Control'
It was wonderful to see, albeit from a far, both the Prime Minister and Sir Keir Starmer choose Hackney to give their new year speeches last week. I don't know whether it was coincidence* they were both drawn to the borough and Here East in Hackney Wick, perhaps it was because it’s home to an incredible cluster of creative businesses and universities. A part of our Olympic legacy and an example of what partnership between national, regional and local government can achieve.
I've written before for Labour List about Keir, the Labour leadership and why we need to build on Labour's record in power in local government and why we must in our next manifesto fully articulate what a new Labour local government settlement would look like.
Since then, neither LGA Labour nor Keir, Angela, Lisa or Rachel have backed away from this debate. It's felt like we were on the verge of something radical and exciting to reset the relationship between Whitehall and town halls across the country. Alongside us, they’ve rightly levelled harsh criticism of Tory failures to deliver, particularly in relation to Levelling Up. The latest strikes and crises in the NHS and wider public sector highlights services under immense pressure, which continue to deliver due to the good will and commitment of staff despite perpetual under-resourcing.
Keir's speech in Hackney gave us a real sense of what the journey to ‘Taking Back Control’ might mean. A clear reset in the Labour’s first King's Speech with a bill to transfer power to citizens, communities and the Councils that represent them. It's a thoughtful and credible solution to the hollowing out of our communities and the powerlessness so many feel.
However, let's not pretend this will be easy. This bold approach will likely face opposition within the party, from Labour MPs and potential ministers, who've now spent years out of power and who as they enter Whitehall departments for the first time in a generation, will now be tasked with shrinking their departments and devolving their new found power to communities. It will also face entrenched civil service resistance not just from departments, but most crucially the Treasury who must be forced to let go of so many of their levers of power and control.
Although not yet confirmed, there are significant signs pointing towards (greater devolution): Ed Miliband’s Conference announcements on Climate Change, Rachel Reeves’s Green Prosperity Plan and being the first 'green chancellor', and Lisa Nandy's book rethinking the state - all the ingredients are now there for a bill with teeth. Demonstrating a Labour Government committed to something much bigger, tangible and impactful, than the wasteful competitive, lumpy, and uneven approach to investment and devolution the Tories have taken.
As we focus rightly on communities left behind, level up & deliver devolution, it can't be a levelling down of London, and the boroughs that surround Here East may well be closer to Whitehall than Carlisle, Plymouth or Newcastle, but they are still as remote from the powers they need to create truly fairer and greener local economies.Why does London and the UK’s cities still only have access to two regressive tax revenues - council tax and business rates.
So my shopping list for this bill is picking the big areas where Labour in power over the past decade of austerity has proved itself better in local government and Wales, than Westminster in delivering.
We need to harness local government’s record on skills, training and jobs, by finally breaking up DWP and DfE and giving the powers and funding associated with Job Centre Plus to councils, with more local investment in Further Education and a reset of apprenticeships funding. With this we could do so much more with the residents and businesses who we know, who trust us to deliver.
On schools, scrap the undemocratic structures of forced academisation and regional schools commissioners and reset the roles between schools, community and councils. Hackney already has some of the best schools, outcomes and high performing school improvement; don't break what is working and intervene only in education systems that really need central support.
On housing, communities shouldn't have to beg a distant secretary of state to licence landlords, ban Section 21 evictions, introduce rent control or even pause or reshape the right to buy. These decisions and powers can and should sit locally. On development, give councils access to right to buy receipts from day one, deliver proper local funding for social and council housing and let us get on with building the homes our communities so desperately need.
On climate, let's take the bold energy and ideas from Miliband and Reeves and use GB Energy to unlock community and municipal energy. Putting assists in the hands of the people, not private companies or a new wave of nationalised businesses, would create the buy-in for a just transition. Giving communities control and a stake in assists to shape their own energy future and create jobs and resilience across coastal, rural and urban areas.
From village halls, to seaside towns and urban estates solar, wind and energy networks could be built, maintained and owned by the people. Already there are tangible examples out there from coops to Stokey Energy, Hackney Community Energy Fund and Hackney Light and Power, with the Energy Bill in Parliament we can put some of the ideas forward now as well with cross party support deliver the sort of localism found in the Local Electricity Bill.
We should also push for devolution on taxation and including new powers to level a hotel or overnight tax. The latter is common across America and Europe, where Governments trust communities to make these decisions, and could create additional revenue common across the world to fund culture and local economic innovation. If this was in turn supported by a new business rates system grounded in the reality of local economies - councils would have a real toolkit to partner with business.
I could go on, but I'm not writing the bill and Labour aren't yet in government nor finalising the manifesto quite yet, but let's be clear and bold in every area of policy what permanently handing back control could really mean. For those worried about the risks and costs, let me reassure you it will be cheaper and more efficient, because while Whitehall has grown and become more remote, local councils have had to do more with less for every year since 2010. What we have never had though is control, with it we can deliver even more.
So let's build something as bold as the vision set out last week, something hopeful in contrast to the already stuttering relaunch of Sunak's already failing premiership. A bold new settlement that seeks to heal the wounds of Brexit, rejects utterly the lack of compassion and dog whistle culture wars at the soul of the postmodern Tory party and starts to really rebuild this country from the bottom up.
A real Labour reform of our broken political system which will make the decisions and debates in our communities count. A new constitutional settlement to unite not only the country, but all parts of the Labour Party and our movement - making us the natural party of government in every village hall, town hall, city hall, shire hall, assembly, and nation in the UK.
*I can also make Valentine’s Day Hackney restaurant recommendations if they are still making plans.
I've written before for Labour List about Keir, the Labour leadership and why we need to build on Labour's record in power in local government and why we must in our next manifesto fully articulate what a new Labour local government settlement would look like.
Since then, neither LGA Labour nor Keir, Angela, Lisa or Rachel have backed away from this debate. It's felt like we were on the verge of something radical and exciting to reset the relationship between Whitehall and town halls across the country. Alongside us, they’ve rightly levelled harsh criticism of Tory failures to deliver, particularly in relation to Levelling Up. The latest strikes and crises in the NHS and wider public sector highlights services under immense pressure, which continue to deliver due to the good will and commitment of staff despite perpetual under-resourcing.
Keir's speech in Hackney gave us a real sense of what the journey to ‘Taking Back Control’ might mean. A clear reset in the Labour’s first King's Speech with a bill to transfer power to citizens, communities and the Councils that represent them. It's a thoughtful and credible solution to the hollowing out of our communities and the powerlessness so many feel.
However, let's not pretend this will be easy. This bold approach will likely face opposition within the party, from Labour MPs and potential ministers, who've now spent years out of power and who as they enter Whitehall departments for the first time in a generation, will now be tasked with shrinking their departments and devolving their new found power to communities. It will also face entrenched civil service resistance not just from departments, but most crucially the Treasury who must be forced to let go of so many of their levers of power and control.
Although not yet confirmed, there are significant signs pointing towards (greater devolution): Ed Miliband’s Conference announcements on Climate Change, Rachel Reeves’s Green Prosperity Plan and being the first 'green chancellor', and Lisa Nandy's book rethinking the state - all the ingredients are now there for a bill with teeth. Demonstrating a Labour Government committed to something much bigger, tangible and impactful, than the wasteful competitive, lumpy, and uneven approach to investment and devolution the Tories have taken.
As we focus rightly on communities left behind, level up & deliver devolution, it can't be a levelling down of London, and the boroughs that surround Here East may well be closer to Whitehall than Carlisle, Plymouth or Newcastle, but they are still as remote from the powers they need to create truly fairer and greener local economies.Why does London and the UK’s cities still only have access to two regressive tax revenues - council tax and business rates.
So my shopping list for this bill is picking the big areas where Labour in power over the past decade of austerity has proved itself better in local government and Wales, than Westminster in delivering.
We need to harness local government’s record on skills, training and jobs, by finally breaking up DWP and DfE and giving the powers and funding associated with Job Centre Plus to councils, with more local investment in Further Education and a reset of apprenticeships funding. With this we could do so much more with the residents and businesses who we know, who trust us to deliver.
On schools, scrap the undemocratic structures of forced academisation and regional schools commissioners and reset the roles between schools, community and councils. Hackney already has some of the best schools, outcomes and high performing school improvement; don't break what is working and intervene only in education systems that really need central support.
On housing, communities shouldn't have to beg a distant secretary of state to licence landlords, ban Section 21 evictions, introduce rent control or even pause or reshape the right to buy. These decisions and powers can and should sit locally. On development, give councils access to right to buy receipts from day one, deliver proper local funding for social and council housing and let us get on with building the homes our communities so desperately need.
On climate, let's take the bold energy and ideas from Miliband and Reeves and use GB Energy to unlock community and municipal energy. Putting assists in the hands of the people, not private companies or a new wave of nationalised businesses, would create the buy-in for a just transition. Giving communities control and a stake in assists to shape their own energy future and create jobs and resilience across coastal, rural and urban areas.
From village halls, to seaside towns and urban estates solar, wind and energy networks could be built, maintained and owned by the people. Already there are tangible examples out there from coops to Stokey Energy, Hackney Community Energy Fund and Hackney Light and Power, with the Energy Bill in Parliament we can put some of the ideas forward now as well with cross party support deliver the sort of localism found in the Local Electricity Bill.
We should also push for devolution on taxation and including new powers to level a hotel or overnight tax. The latter is common across America and Europe, where Governments trust communities to make these decisions, and could create additional revenue common across the world to fund culture and local economic innovation. If this was in turn supported by a new business rates system grounded in the reality of local economies - councils would have a real toolkit to partner with business.
I could go on, but I'm not writing the bill and Labour aren't yet in government nor finalising the manifesto quite yet, but let's be clear and bold in every area of policy what permanently handing back control could really mean. For those worried about the risks and costs, let me reassure you it will be cheaper and more efficient, because while Whitehall has grown and become more remote, local councils have had to do more with less for every year since 2010. What we have never had though is control, with it we can deliver even more.
So let's build something as bold as the vision set out last week, something hopeful in contrast to the already stuttering relaunch of Sunak's already failing premiership. A bold new settlement that seeks to heal the wounds of Brexit, rejects utterly the lack of compassion and dog whistle culture wars at the soul of the postmodern Tory party and starts to really rebuild this country from the bottom up.
A real Labour reform of our broken political system which will make the decisions and debates in our communities count. A new constitutional settlement to unite not only the country, but all parts of the Labour Party and our movement - making us the natural party of government in every village hall, town hall, city hall, shire hall, assembly, and nation in the UK.
*I can also make Valentine’s Day Hackney restaurant recommendations if they are still making plans.
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