‘It’s going to get better’: Hackney mayor sanguine as she marks one year in office

When she joined Hackney Council, Caroline Woodley did not have her eyes set on becoming the borough’s first directly-elected female mayor.

Having entered the fray of local politics after joining the Labour party in 2015, she was chosen as a ward councillor for Cazenove three years later.

Before long, she had been given the cabinet brief for families, parks and leisure under then mayor Philip Glanville, who notoriously resigned in 2023 in the wake of a scandal relating to a disgraced ex-councillor.

When it came to standing herself, “there was was a sense of a kind of call of duty”, she told the Citizen in April.

One year since her election as mayor, its impact on her life has been sweeping but “incredible”, she says.

The job has allowed her to engage more with the community’s groups and organisations, and experience the “real sense of partnership” that comes with it.

“I’ve been so warmly received by people who, I think, understand some of the pressures that we’re under and want to help.”

While a step change from holding one cabinet brief to several, she says her virtually 24/7 role as families, parks and leisure chief — a portfolio she still holds as mayor — was a good warm-up, and indeed a strong motivator, for becoming the council’s leader.

“The reason I stepped up to the mayoral space was because I wanted to raise the platform for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

“I was already having to think about how to work with the Greater London Authority, how to work with the central government, how to do something to improve the situation for a system that frankly wasn’t working.

“So I already worked quite intensive hours and had a very strong sense of responsibility towards some of our most vulnerable, and that was just amplified coming in as mayor.”

The key difference now, she says, is that she is surrounded by an “amazing” support team to help her deal with the burdens of the office, whether it’s caseworkers or the varied expertise of the council’s cabinet.

But in politics, one must always be prepared for “events”, she says, invoking Harold Macmillan’s famous quote about what drives governments off course.

“I always knew I would have to react to tough challenges, but I couldn’t have predicted them all. The toughest thing has obviously been having further insight into the budget pressures, and then, seeing the level of need increase.

“Having gone through the pandemic, I expected things to settle and improve to some extent. Then what we saw with the cost-of-living crisis, the energy crisis, a mental health crisis really, was this level of need going up and up.

“I already knew very well there was pressure in adult and children’s social care and SEND. But then daily rates of homelessness were going up, along with the costs and the pressure on our annual budget.”

The Town Hall recently warned of bruising decisions ahead, following a projected £38m overspend by the end of 2024/25.

In the days after the interview, Mayor Woodley stated the council would have to find a total of £67 million in savings by 2028.

“We’re having to continue to look at really tough savings, while knowing that’s going to have quite a lot of impact on our residents. But we’ve made achievements in the face of all those challenges.”

Before becoming mayor, Woodley secured £12 million from the Department for Education to help create 300 school places for children with SEND.

At the end of the last school year, four primary schools in the borough had been forced to close due to falling pupil rolls and tighter budgets.

Then, in September, families and staff belonging to four more schools were told their establishments would have to close for the same reasons, sending shockwaves through the borough.

Some anguished parents told the Citizen they were fearful of the impact on special needs support, which is facing a nationwide crisis.

More closures must have been the last thing the borough’s lead for families would have wanted to sign off on, but Woodley is reluctantly convinced that the decision was unavoidable.

“We found ourselves in a situation with a shrinking birth rate and emptying buildings and incredibly talented school staff having to look at how they can balance the books. So we’re having to intervene and look at closures and mergers,” she says.

“For schools, it’s about the vision for the future and getting that strategy in place. Obviously, we want a sustainable school network.

“I understand why we’re doing it when I meet headteachers and senior leadership teams. Some are perhaps on their third restructure and having to look at how to make things work, where they are juggling three different roles and one senior leader.

“Eventually they need to come to the council, the council needs to step in and help them think about how to do things differently. Sometimes that does involve closing the door, and ultimately they want the best for their children as well.”

She recalls how Hackney’s first directly-elected mayor, Jules Pipe, “turned around the condition of the schools”, and insists that the council “continues to take pride in the fact that we have good and outstanding schools across the board”.

“I just think it’s important to say that we put additional funding into some of those schools that went through that closure process, additional support around special educational needs and disabilities.

“We’re learning as we go. We’d obviously rather not be in that space but I think we have a great deal of hope for the future,” she adds.

The council’s broader approach to cutting local services has come under harsher light in recent weeks.

Following proposals to shut Sebright and Fernbank children’s centres, cutting  close to a quarter of the borough’s subsidised childcare places, campaigners launched a legal challenge.

They claimed that other options were not considered and the council’s consultaiton had “misled the community”.

At the eleventh hour, the case was settled out of court and the Town Hall was found to have acted unlawfully.

“We’re certainly going to come together across the different services and look at what went right and what went wrong,” Woodley says.

“When you have a legal challenge like that, there’s always potential that you might have to come to a place where you consent to settle as we did.

“It’s really regrettable that we actually had to be in that space in the first place, so I will obviously speak to parents to understand why they were so concerned about the proposal, for their children and for staff, to go to alternative providers.”

Woodley sees a clear opportunity for the council to learn more, including through its Affordable Childcare Commission, undertaken earlier this year.

“We’ve got to review how can we sustain the subsidy that we’re putting into any of our settings — apart from where they’re the most vulnerable children in need which we’ll always do regardless. That wouldn’t just be in children’s centres, when we’re facing the financial challenge that we’ve got.

“A lot of people are feeling that question: why do you think families are moving out of housing? Have you seen the cost of housing? Why do you think birth rates are dropping?

“I think it’s good to be in both the research space as well as in the space with parents, who actually just feel a very passionate commitment to their local children’s centre or their local school, because let’s face it — it is also their local community.”

With regards to those children’s centres earmarked for closure, “everyone should be prepared for further proposals to come forward”, she admits.

Despite the Conservatives’ dire poll performance over the last two years, Woodley insists she did not take a Labour general election victory for granted, nor indeed Sadiq Khan’s re-election as London’s mayor.

That both realities have borne out gives her high hopes for the future.

“It’s going to get better, to coin a phrase,” she says, invoking a humbler take on New Labour’s anthem.

As an example, Woodley points to the assets the borough is able to capitalise on in order to cope with the housing crisis.

“We’re quite lucky as a council, although we clearly have massive challenges, it’s incredible because we have our own delivery team, and also the level of support from City Hall for our buy-back funding so we can put more homes available to families who need them,” she says.

“Our ambition would be to create more housing in borough where we can, whether that’s temporary accommodation units to the standard families require, or whether it’s new homes.”

“When we do build new homes, they are award-winning,” she adds, noting Chowdhury Walk’s triumph at the Neave Brown Awards and making the shortlist for prestigious Stirling Prize.

The families, parks and leisure brief is of great importance to Woodley, who beams with pride about the borough’s achievements in that area.

“I am going to shout about 31 Green Flags for our parks and green spaces, and that we’ve done an incredible job in rescuing Abney Park, taking it off the risk register after 30 years of campaigning.”

Her bullishness stands in contrast to the messaging of the new Labour government, which has not shied away from painting a bleak picture of the public finances.

Following controversial cuts to winter fuel payments and the Chancellor’s divisive autumn budget, the Citizen put it to Woodley that the government’s outlook is quite dour compared to hers.

“We should remember: this is year one,” she says.

“I think [the government] tried to manage our expectations very much before the autumn statement came out, and actually there’s quite a lot of radical stuff in there.

“The fact that they’re lifting the minimum wage, the investment into the NHS, they weren’t kidding about that. They really have put an injection in.”

She expects the government will be in a better position in the coming years, which will directly benefit Hackney residents.

“I feel like we’re just hanging on to our hats at the moment, trying to get through a tough spot.

“I know it’s not the sexiest thing to talk about multi-year settlements to local government, but it’s the dream for us, because living on short-term funding and short-term grants is so destabilising.

“I think we’re getting to a place where we’ll feel more stable.”

In the meantime, Woodley says her focus is to maintain the borough as a place where residents feel proud to belong.

“One thing I’m most proud of is that we’re a borough that never hesitates to stand up for migrants, to stand up for the 89 different languages that are spoken, and the diversity,” she says.

Hackney notably saw noisy anti-racist demonstrations this summer, following violent anti-migrant and refugee riots up and down the country.

For Mayor Woodley, the key milestones for the coming years will be to have made a dent in housing crisis through the support of government and City Hall, in the form of new homes and temporary accommodation.

Alongside this, more will have been done to address the poverty divide through the council’s Money Hub and other initiatives.

Woodley is also passionate that the borough remains a climate leader, which to her is “a reputation that’s been hard-won”.

“If I imagine flying over the borough, I could identify somewhere in every neighbourhood and every ward where we’re beginning to make a difference, and that’s really exciting.

“I’m really proud of it and I want to continue to make it, as we put it, a greener and fairer borough.”