Hackney Council: local authority assessment

Published: 5 February 2026 Page last updated: 5 February 2026

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Assessment published: 5 February 2026

About Hackney Council

Demographics

Hackney Council is a unitary authority in Central London with 266,758 residents. Hackney Council is proud of its long history of welcoming refugees, including Jewish, Turkish and Vietnamese communities.  It is now a bustling urban area that is a place where people from a range of backgrounds, cultures and income brackets coexist. It is one of the most deprived areas in the country, ranking 7th out of 317 (1st being the most deprived), and has an Index Multiple Deprivation score of 10 (with 10 being the highest and most deprived). The proportion of private and social rented tenures in Hackney is 72% which is higher than the rest of London (50%).

There is a rich ethnic and cultural mix in Hackney, 47% of people were from ethnic minorities (excluding white minorities), of whom 21% were Black, Black British, Caribbean or African, 10% were Asian and Asian British, 9% other ethnic groups and 7% from mixed or multiple heritage. It is also estimated that 11.7%-12.5% of the population are part of the Orthodox Jewish community.  20% of residents preferred to speak in languages other than English, with Turkish 3.2% and Spanish 2% being the most preferred. Hackney has a smaller proportion of people over 65 (8%) and a greater proportion of people of working age (71%) than the national average.

Hackney Council is one of seven place-based partnerships in the Northeast London Integrated Care System and shares its place-based partnership area with the City of London. This includes Homerton Healthcare Trust, providing hospital services and the East London NHS Foundation Trust, providing mental health and community health services. Hackney is a longstanding Labour-controlled local authority, with 57 elected councillors across 21 wards. The makeup of councillors is 45 Labour, 6 Conservative, 3 Hackney Independent Socialist Group, and 3 Green Party. 

During 2020, Hackney Council experienced a criminal cyber-attack, which meant the loss of its adult social care records system. The record system went live again in 2022; the reintroduction of the system required development for it to achieve full capacity, with this process continuing. This meant that some national data sets were not available for this assessment. 

Financial facts

The Financial facts for Hackney Council are: 

  • The local authority estimated that in 2024/25, its total budget would be £735,502,000.  Its actual spend for that year was £763,533,000 which was £28,031,000 more than estimated.
  • The local authority estimated that it would spend £116,854000 of its total budget on adult social care in 2024/25 Its actual spend was £142,071,000 which is £25,217,000 more than estimated.
  • In 2024/25, 18.61% of the budget was spent on adult social care.
  • The local authority has raised the full adult social care precept for 2024/25, with a value of 2%. Please note that the amount raised through ASC precept varies from local authority to local authority. 
  • The local authority did not submit national data on the number of people accessing long-term and short-term social care in 2023/24. Local authorities spend money on a range of adult social care services, including supporting individuals. No two care packages are the same and vary significantly in their intensity, duration, and cost.

This data is reproduced at the request of the Department of Health and Social Care. It has not been factored into our assessment and is presented for information purposes only.