Greens set out plans for Hackney as Labour vows to ‘hold new administration to account’

Victorious: Zoë Garbett at the Hackney election count, Friday 8 May 2026. Photograph: LDRS

Greens are jubilant following their historic sweep in last Thursday’s landslide victory that swept Labour from power.

Labour had been the dominant party on Hackney Council continuously since 1971.

The Green party took 42 of the 57 seats on Hackney Council, up from four., whilst Labour fell from 43 seats to nine. The Conservatives held on to six.

The Greens also took the directly-elected mayoralty for the first time, with Zoë Garbett polling 35,720 votes to defeat Labour’s Caroline Woodley on 26,865.

The party recognises that it has a lot of hard work ahead of it, however.

In a statement, the Hackney Greens thanked all those who helped the party in the election campaign and said: “We look forward to running a Green council that keeps the spirit of community, participation and people-powered democracy at its heart. We will always stand for this.”

In her victory speech at the count, Garbett said: “Today, we start the fightback. In this election, over and over, people kept telling me that they felt let down. Council services are failing those who need them most and people are struggling to make ends meet.”

She added: “I’ll fight the system that views housing as a way of making money, rather than a universal right for every single person.”

Garbett has set out a number of immediate priorities for her administration.

Chief among them is what she has called “a full investigation into who owns Hackney, its buildings, its land”, which she has said will form one of her first acts as mayor.

She has also pledged to lead a national, cross-borough campaign against austerity, demanding the full restoration of local council funding.

Other manifesto commitments include making the building of new council homes “a core priority”, expanding landlord licensing across the whole borough, and using the office of the mayor to press central government for local rent control powers.

Meanwhile Ben Lucas, one of the few re-elected Labour party councillors, has signalled that the much-reduced Labour group intends to mount a vigorous opposition from the start: “Hackney Labour will be holding the borough’s new administration to account and we’re well up for the fight.”

Lucas held his Hoxton West seat with 1,200 votes, finishing second behind Green Nicholas Blincoe. Labour cabinet member Carole Williams lost her seat in the same ward.

With nine councillors now facing a 42-strong Green administration, he and his colleagues will form the principal challenge to Garbett at full council meetings, scrutiny commissions and on the cabinet’s spending decisions.

Labour cabinet members who lost their seats were Susan Fajana-Thomas in Stoke Newington, Guy Nicholson in Homerton, Chris Kennedy in Hackney Wick, and Anya Sizer in Hoxton East and Shoreditch.

Among the few Labour survivors are former cabinet members Cllr Antoinette Bramble (London Fields), Cllr Sarah Young (Woodberry Down) along with councillors Robert Chapman and Anna Lynch in Homerton, and Kam Adams in Hoxton East and Shoreditch.

Outgoing mayor Caroline Woodley congratulated Garbett on her “determination and resilience” in her concession speech, before turning her remarks to her own party in Westminster. “To my Labour government, you’ve got a lot of work to do,” she said.

Disarray in the national Labour party could potentially stymie the party’s chances to reorganise, after its historic loss of 34 of the 43 seats it held prior to the vote.

Labour suffered heavy losses across England, Scotland and Wales, with election expert Sir John Curtice estimating the party’s national vote share at around 14 per cent.

Speaking alongside Garbett at the Hackney count, Green party leader Zack Polanski said: “Two-party politics is no longer dying — it is dead. This is a historic victory for the Green party.”

The 57-seat Hackney Council is now made up of 42 Green party councillors, nine Labour and six Conservatives.

This gives the Greens the highest proportion of seats the party has ever won in a principal local authority.