Council ‘exploring options’ to prevent antisocial behaviour in green spaces

Hackney Council has announced that it is “exploring its options” for putting in place more stringent measures to prevent antisocial behaviour, public drunkenness and littering in its green spaces as lockdown measures ease.

The Town Hall has applied to the courts for an injunction order to prevent large gatherings on Hackney Marshes, and a small area of woodland on London Fields adjacent to Martello Street has been fenced off.

These are understood to be the beginning of a range of measures to prevent disruption to the neighbourhood, damage to wildlife and an increased risk of virus transmission.

Parks chief Cllr Jon Burke has spoken of his outrage after tons of rubbish was left at London Fields overnight, human faeces had to be picked out of public urinals by officers, and residents at nearby Morland Estate were left unable to use their playground after it was fouled by revellers.

Burke said: “This is not acceptable, reasonable behaviour from adults. When people come to complain to me about [the measures], and there will inevitably be people who disagree with my view of how London Fields needs to function in everyone’s interests, my response ultimately will be, ‘This is why you can’t have nice things’.

“If you wanted it to be like Berlin, where people behave with moderation and respect for their fellow citizens, people have not behaved like that. So now I am going to impose the same commitments, rights and responsibilities that everybody else has.

“People can accuse me of being illiberal, to which my response will be one big shrug. I’m a socialist. I believe in a rules-based society.

“This year, this situation became an intolerable mess, and I am not willing to allow families with no access to green space to come out of their front doors in the morning to find people have urinated, defecated, to have people standing shouting into their phones into the middle of the night waiting for their Uber to turn up because they’ve been boozing all day, or to not be able to take their children down on a Saturday because of the scenes they’re witnessing.

“I don’t care if there’s not a single vote in this for me. I represent two of the most working class service areas in the council and I am not going to tolerate a situation in which working class people are leant on to an extreme extent to sustain the lifestyles of people who want to go and get blind drunk on London Fields all day.”

Hackney made national headlines at the beginning of the month after council officers ran out of paper handing out fines for urinating and littering in London Fields, with Burke adding that fires being lit on the Marshes during the hot weather had risked a serious blaze.

Rubbish collections during the summer at London Fields alone last year cost nearly £100,000, with additional bins expected to cost £80,000.

The Town Hall’s full summer waste collection routine has now been rolled out a month early, with staff collecting rubbish from first thing in the morning through to the evening.

Some residents have called for extra bins and additional portable toilets to help deal with the problem, but Burke has argued back that more resources sent to the area would exacerbate the problem and create a “demand pull” effect by making the area more attractive, while diverting funds from other green spaces.

Burke added: “As a cabinet we’re united on the need to address these serious issues. For those people who say I should take a more liberal approach, I say go and speak to the mother whose child picked up a used tampon from the bushes the other day, even though there were toilets available.

“To bus in portaloos and increase the number of bins even further to effectively service the needs of a relatively small number of people to the exclusion of other parks users?

“My very strong message is, I have absolutely no intention of resourcing London Fields to create an open air festival atmosphere down there. Quite the opposite, I’m looking at measures to reduce the attractiveness of that space to people who want to drink all day.”

Additional measures in a joint project between Burke and community safety chief Cllr Caroline Selman are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

EDIT: This article was updated at 08:47 on Friday 12 June. The original had Cllr Burke responding to any accusation of being “a liberal,” rather than “illiberal.”