Decision time as voters prepare to elect next Mayor of Hackney

Polling in Hackney’s mayoral election takes place on 15 September

Hackney voters will go to the polls again this month, this time to choose the borough’s next directly elected Mayor.

Labour, the Conservatives, the Greens, the One Love party and the Liberal Democrats are fielding candidates. The position of directly elected Mayor, created in 2002, exists in only four London boroughs: Hackney, Lewisham, Newham and Tower Hamlets.

At least two candidates – Dave Raval, for the Liberal Democrats, and Samir Jeraj, for the Greens, have effectively said they would seek to scrap it and return to an older system of local government which they say is more democratic. Labour’s Philip Glanville, who is considered the frontrunner, said Mayor of Hackney was “the biggest job any of us will ever go for, I think”. He added that it has “real power to change local outcomes for people.”

He has clashed with Conservative challenger Amy Gray on issues including education. She says the council is not willing enough to working with free schools and academy chains to solve the crisis in school places. But Glanville said the council should “not rely on an untested free school model that doesn’t deliver the facilities that we want”.

He also attacked forced academisation, saying it was “linked to the ideological free school agenda”.

The Greens’ policies include moving to a pay ratio at the Town Hall that would mean the highest paid council employee would not be paid a wage more than 10 times that of the lowest paid.

The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, have made the EU central to their campaign. Raval said: “This is a local election, but it is also the biggest election in the UK since the EU referendum, and its set in a context in which, I believe, our political system in this country is broken both locally and nationally.”

Dawa Ma, the One Love party’s candidate, wants to legalise cannabis and get John Paul Gaultier to design school uniforms. The party also wants to send missions to mine asteroids and establish colonies on Mars and Venus to “ensure the survival of the human race”.

Polling in the mayoral election takes place on 15 September.