Town Hall’s struggle to address Hackney’s digital divide continues

Hackney Council’s administration is continuing to undertake a “big piece of work” to help the borough’s large proportion of residents unable to access or use digital technology.

According to the Town Hall’s skills lead Cllr Carole Williams, cabinet members including Deputy Mayor Anntoinette Bramble, housing chief Cllr Clayeon McKenzie and community safety boss Cllr Caroline Selman have all been meeting with officers throughout lockdown to address the problem, which cuts across education, employment, wellbeing, and efforts to tackle coronavirus.

Hackney has long struggled with digital exclusion, with a 2012 report showing a quarter of residents at the time had never used the internet in their lives – the highest level of any London borough.

Cllr Williams said: “We’ve always known that large proportions of Hackney residents have been digitally excluded. The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted that, in education, in terms of access to employment opportunities.

“I’m keen that what we do is look at how we flex our learning offer to ensure that when there are further outbreaks that we can quickly move them online, but I also have to bear in mind digital exclusion in the borough, so we can’t have an offer that is totally online. We’ve got to remember that there are some people with no digital skills at all.”

Williams spoke of the importance of providing residents with the skills to use the internet, especially during lockdown, giving as an example a Caribbean elders’ group in the north of the borough, many of whom had not been able to use devices but now hold weekly exercise classes online, which the skills chief described as “an absolute lifeline”, and something that has continued after restrictions were lifted.

She added: “Education is another area. Digital exclusion is really key. Not putting everything online, being able to flex, but also being able to help people get online who will need to do so in the future.

“A lot of work is going to be online in the future. Those digital skills are going to become all the more important in the future labour market.”

Hackney Learning Trust figures released earlier this year, during a call-out for extra laptops for remote learning during lockdown, showed that 10 per cent of the borough’s children have no devices at all, with 15 per cent sharing too much or having no access to enough bandwidth to be able to access educational materials.

A July report by the Education Endowment Foundation showed that the likely impact of lockdown could see the reversal of a decade’s progress in tackling educational inequality, with the council saying in August that, at the time, around 4,000 pupils in the borough did not have sufficient access to ICT facilities.

Cllr Williams was being quizzed at a committee examining the future skills offer for Hackney residents in light of the damaging impact of the pandemic to both the local and national economies, causing the steepest recession on record.

With the hospitality, arts and culture sector anticipated to be particularly hard hit by the latest set of government restrictions to limit the spread of the virus, Cllr Williams spoke for the administration in calling for the extension of the furlough scheme.

She said: “Extending the furlough scheme is definitely the view of a number of us as cabinet members. The Mayor, myself and other cabinet members think that the government should be doing as much as they possibly can so that there isn’t a cliff edge, so that unemployment does not increase drastically at the end of September and also into the New Year.

“We think that the government should be doing everything they possibly can to protect jobs and protect livelihoods.”

The Town Hall has written many letters calling for shifts in policy, but according to Williams many of these fall on deaf ears, underlining the importance of local authorities working together: “Ministers are not necessarily responding to those letters, so letter-writing does not always give us what we want, particularly locally.”

The Town Hall has now signed an agreement with London Metropolitan University to undertake a new partnership to get young people into work and improve employment opportunities for the borough’s students, with Williams calling on the council to “shift and be quite agile to the changing skills needed in the economy in the coming months and years”.

Council research during lockdown, according to officers, showed that the borough’s young see their employment challenges as directly relating to and amplifying challenges and concerns around mental health.

The borough’s young people stressed the importance of paid work placements in allowing people to have a “foot in the door”, especially as opportunities dwindle in the face of Covid.

Andrew Munk, the council’s head of employment and skills, said: “We are seeing large numbers of Hackney residents on Universal Credit (UC) now, and large numbers on the furlough scheme, particularly in hospitality and retail. It remains to be seen the extent to which UC goes up further at the end of that furlough scheme.

“We’re also seeing coronavirus a number of sectors, such as green jobs, seeing some growth. It remains to be seen exactly what that looks like, and what the equality angles are on that as well.”

Cllr Williams added: “Because of the impact of coronavirus, the economy is going to take a massive hit. There is going to be a significant impact on jobs and their availability, particularly once the furlough scheme comes to an end at the end of October.

“Businesses are going to need even more support in the coming months as they begin to recognise the impact on their own businesses. Public sector organisations are going to be key to the future of the economy.

“We heard the Prime Minister at the dispatch box make further announcements on upcoming restrictions. We don’t know what is going to happen, and the ground is shifting all the time. We have some data on unemployment levels, but of course after the furlough scheme, that could change quite significantly, so we’ll have to keep an eye on that.

“Nationally and locally, the economy is experiencing the largest recession on record. The focus for the council with regard to inclusive growth and developing an inclusive economy has had to shift to building back better, rather than of widening access to economic growth that had existed previously.”

Advice and opportunities can be found at the council’s employment advice service Hackney Works at hackneyworks.hackney.gov.uk