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Hackney Council’s report shows their consultation on 55 Morning Lane was a missed opportunity

We welcome the report on the Council’s consultation about their plans for 55 Morning Lane. The reports cover four public meetings, an online survey, and some additional pop ups and workshops that happened between December 2023 and April 2024.

This is a more thorough consultation and a more honest report than we’ve come to expect from Hackney Council. And that is a direct result of residents’ efforts.

It was residents who first demanded co-design. The Council itself asked us in MOPS to suggest consultants with a track record in co-design. We did. They rejected both our suggestions. We fought for them. They became the only two bidders. This is what ‘co-design’ has meant in practice: the council asks, resists, and eventually accepts — but only after residents do the hard work of insisting.

This report acknowledges that ‘affordable housing’ is a “vague, misleading” term and that for the vast majority of Hackney residents, the only form of housing that is affordable is social rent homes. To quote the report’s view on this: “the strongest and most consistent message across all forms of engagement has been a clear call for Council homes at social rent. This should be understood as the underlying priority in most responses that refer to genuinely affordable housing.”

The report’s mention of trust is important but it fails to build this.

Early on, the report states: “It is important to acknowledging [sic] the community’s past frustrations and disappointments to move forward and rebuild trust to create a collaborative working environment”. This message is repeated several times, echoing our own reports. However, even as it mentions rebuilding trust, this report damages it. It does not explain why it took 15 months to publish, nor does it give a timeline for the next steps in the process. But most of all it calls the Council’s consultation a “co-design process” when it was not, and the report does not address any of the detailed critiques of it in our own report. In our report, we defined co-design and showed why this wasn’t it. The Council’s report doesn’t even attempt to justify the label.

The results of the Council’s consultation strongly support our two key and consistent campaign demands: to retain a big supermarket and for at least 50% of any homes built on the site to be council housing at social rent.

To quote the findings from the Council’s survey — which had about 400 responses, more than any of the Council’s other activities:

“The strongest and most consistent message across responses was the need to retain a large supermarket, ideally Tesco or a store of similar or larger size.”
“A strong priority among respondents was the delivery of genuinely affordable housing, with specific calls for council housing or social rent properties. Many explicitly rejected private flats or ‘affordable’ products they considered unaffordable to most Hackney residents.”

Similarly, the report’s top two points summarising the 122 Instagram comments are:

“Many commenters were strongly opposed to any loss or downsizing of the Tesco store. They highlighted its essential role as a large, accessible supermarket serving local families, the elderly, and people with disabilities.”
“Repeated calls were made for genuinely affordable housing, particularly larger homes for families and more social housing. There was widespread scepticism about “affordable” offers being primarily shared ownership or unaffordable private sales.”

The Council’s report frames resident input as “shaping” options. But it is clear that these were already structurally determined and residents were being invited to contribute only to the cosmetic arrangement of pre-set elements.

All of the report’s three design options have a Tesco that is much smaller than the current store – at about 36% of the floor space – and all of them have 25.8–26.8% social housing.

Previously we identified four strategies that the Council uses in its communications: dodging, wordiness, hiding, and omitting. This report is full of hiding and omitting.

We don’t learn anything about the deal Hackney Council did with Tesco, why the Option Agreement with Hackney Walk Ltd had no social housing requirement, or why the architect appointment wasn’t community-led. Nor, as noted above, do we learn what the Council means by co-design. Our own report on the consultation is not even mentioned in the Council’s report.

A key omission relates to viability.

In theory, viability is the way a plan is tested to see if it is financially possible. In practice, viability assessments are used by private developers to justify developments that are dominated by unaffordable private housing. The third Council workshop dealt with viability. In this workshop, residents challenged the Council’s use of the developer model and questioned the numbers they were feeding into the model. These issues dominated the workshop with a clear demand for the Council to look at alternative models and funding sources and to respond to questions such as regarding the income already earned from the land via rent and developer fees. None of these challenges make it into the Council’s report.

Above all, this report shows that the Council’s consultation was a missed opportunity. The Council should have built on existing community knowledge rather than starting from scratch, spending public money to reach fewer people with less depth.

The Council’s work involved about: 100 workshop attendees, 100 street interviews, 400 survey responses, 50 community workshop participants, and 122 Instagram responses. MOPS’s work has involved more people – 1384 people completed our first survey and 1245 people completed our second survey. We’ve held 10 public meetings attended by 30 to 100 people and spent about hundreds of hours every year talking to people outside Tesco. We’ve engaged people via TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook with one viral post attracting 415 comments, and we’ve gone into community groups (AgeUK, a local youth group, a local church, London Renters Union, tenants groups etc).

The Council’s report is a narrative account of each of its consultation activities with a description of what happened and a summary of key points including sample quotations. In comparison, MOPS reports take an analytic approach working thematically across multiple datasets and explaining how we analysed the data and came to each of our conclusions.

It would have been cheaper and more effective if the Council had partnered with MOPS to do genuine co-design rather than employing a consultant to do — rapidly and less rigorously — what residents had already done.

This approach is a legacy of the Labour administration.

We hope that, under the new administration, Hackney Council changes tack and begins to work in partnership with us and other residents. Our position has always been the community’s position, which the Council’s own report now confirms. Partnership doesn’t require agreement — it requires shared decision-making power.

Our first meeting with Hackney’s new council leadership

On Monday 10th August, six MOPS members attended a meeting in Hackney Town Hall with Green Councillor Alastair Binnie Lubbock and Deputy Mayor Dylan Law to talk about their plans for the Tesco site in Hackney Central. Alastair has cabinet responsibility for this and other development sites. It was good to be back in the Town Hall. We used to have regular meetings with Phil Glanville when he was Mayor of Hackney but after he resigned, we have not met any elected councillors until now. For a while we met with council staff but as we became more critical of their approach, those meetings also stalled.

The meeting was very friendly, and we feel that the Greens are up for listening in a way that Labour weren’t. Alastair promised that the long-overdue report on the Council’s consultation will be published within two weeks. He explained that they want to develop the site and to find a partner to work with soon. We hope to see them sharing a timetable for this with residents so that we can be active in the process.

Before taking any big decisions, we urged Alastair and other cabinet members to look at our three reports and the records of our public meetings. These show that residents have two clear priorities for the site: to keep a big Tesco there and to have new social housing. As well as cheap housing and shopping, people want a development that benefits local residents, that matches the area, and that has a sense of space – people don’t want tightly-packed tower blocks, they want balconies, community spaces, play areas, and family-sized flats.

Alastair told us that they are talking with Tesco and we encouraged him to enable the community to engage directly with decision makers at Tesco, using the approaches developed in our meetings where residents have been involved in open, transparent dialogue with council officers and cabinet members.

We also hope to see Hackney’s new Green council addressing issues that are relevant way beyond 55 Morning Lane – how they plan to co-design developments with residents, how they are going to explore alternative methods of financing developments and assess their viability, and how they will develop sustainably.

Our communication with the new Hackney councillors

On 7 June, about a month after their election, we emailed Hackney Council’s new Mayor Zoë Garbett, Deputy Mayor Dylan Law and cabinet member with responsibility for 55 Morning Lane Alastair Binnie Lubbock. They responded positively a week later and we’ll be meeting Dylan and Alastair in early August. Below is our correspondence.

After offering “congratulations on your recent elections and your new responsibilities for housing, planning and development in Hackney”, we said that “we welcome the new administration and hope this will mark a change in how Hackney Council engages with us and other residents about the plans for 55 Morning Lane”. We continued:

“We know that you’ve all engaged with MOPS in the past and we invite you to re-engage with us in your new roles. Specifically, we are emailing to ask for a meeting with a small group of MOPS campaigners before the summer break in order to discuss your plans for the site.

“Given what you know about our work, you will not be surprised that we urge you to bring transparency (e.g. by releasing the unredacted Option Agreement and the report on the consultation that concluded in April 2025). Nor will it surprise you that we urge you to quickly open a dialogue with the local community and we would be happy to discuss partnering with you on this.

“We see it as key for you to involve Tesco in any dialogue with the community, to re-frame the brief for the site, to look for new ways of funding any development, and to only develop this site in a way that adds social value over and above its current uses.”

We finished by suggesting that “in the longer term, there is a need to look again at the Hackney Central Plan given the outcome of earlier consultations” and informed them that “we plan to publish our correspondence with you on our website”.

Alastair’s reply thanked us for our email and stated:

“I would very much welcome a meeting with MOPS campaigners. I will raise the points about transparency with officers and see if there is any legitimate reason those items cannot be made public, but I don’t see why they shouldn’t be, indeed I have already asked to see a copy of the engagement report myself.

“I agree that we need to set out a vision for this site and bring Tesco to the table to get an outcome that delivers the maximum possible social value for the site which was acquired at some cost to the council by the previous administration. I look forward to working with you and the wider community on this incredibly important site and I thank you once again for all of the work you’ve already put into making sure we get the best outcome we can.”

Hackney Council elections

On 7th May, Hackney residents voted for change, electing a Green Mayor and replacing most of the Labour councillors with Greens. This desire for new leadership in Hackney was evident at our last public meeting on Saturday 11th April, which was an opportunity to question candidates in the then upcoming elections.

We were joined by Zoë Garbett (Hackney Greens), Heather Mendick & Alana Heaney (Hackney Independent Socialists), Ken Gabbott-Rolph (Liberal Democrats), Brian Debus (Trade Union and Socialist Coalition), and Clair Battaglino (Independent). We also invited the Labour Party, the Conservatives and Reform.

We started by asking our panel: What are your plans for the Morning Lane Site? They were also asked about how they would manage housing repairs, fund the building of council housing, and support local democracy.

Zoë spoke about greater accountability and transparency, she wanted to look at other options for housing such as a Community Land Trust and to make sure Tesco aren’t operating rent-free on the site. She said that she will push back against developers and will work with us and other community groups.

We oppose the threat to Argun Stationers in Hackney Central

We support Argun Printers and Stationers who are threatened with an early termination of their lease if they do not consider moving from their present premises on Mare Street to the derelict ‘fashion hub’. Their landlords are the Arch Company who purchased all the railway arches from Network Rail. The Arch Company has itself been taken over by Blackstone, an American Private Equity company notorious for their predatory investment strategy. Their aim is to maximise profits by turning the many arches into bars and restaurants.

For over thirty years Argun has been a central part of Hackney. As owner Farukh Adia says the attack on them is “an act that not only jeopardises our business but threatens the fabric of a community staple”.

Argun is situated on the edge of the Tesco site, 55 Morning Lane. MOPS has been campaigning for six years to make the community’s voice heard over the council’s redevelopment plans for this site, working for meaningful involvement in the planning and design processes and to put community needs where they should be – at the heart of any changes. The community’s need is for Argun to remain, to support businesses that have nurtured and resourced our community, and to prevent developers controlling changes to the future of Hackney Central.

MOPS have a long record of campaigning in the area and we will be organising to support the retention of Argun in its current location. We urge everyone to sign the petition against the forced relocation of the business and to join us on Saturday 7th February 11am-12.30pm outside the shop to collect signatures. The needs of Hackney’s residents and workers must determine what happens in our borough’s Town Centre.

No Big Tesco and no Social housing, no vote

At our public meeting on Saturday 18th October, there was a mix of frustration, disappointment and anger at Hackney Council’s design ideas for 55 Morning Lane, after they ignored what residents need and demand – a big Tesco and 50% social housing. These demands are consistent with those made in previous surveys, meetings, council consultations, and conversations. But the discussion of what to do next was full of new and innovative ideas.

We’re encouraged by Hackney Council increasing the amount of social housing in the plans from zero when we started our campaign to about 26% now. We’re disappointed by their insistence on downsizing Tesco despite claiming at the start of the consultation in December that no decision had been made beyond promising Tesco a minimum size for any new store.

There was overwhelming support for making Hackney Council’s plans for 55 Morning Lane an electoral issue by demanding that Labour councillors develop the site for the community if they want our votes in May. People at the meeting also want to increase the specific pressure on cabinet members ahead of them making a decision on this which Council Officers have told us will happen this year.

Working in small groups we developed demands, questions and campaign ideas and then we shared these. Here are some of our questions:

Why are we not building 50% council housing on council-owned land? Have all funding routes been explored? Why can’t the council be the developer?

Can we put pressure on Tesco? Why is Tesco not paying any rent?

What is the risk of financing the deal via sales of private housing? Can we defer the decision?

Can we challenge the consultation? Did the consultation reach beyond the digitally literate?

How much is the parking currently being used? What is the impact of the loss of the parking on local businesses?

And finally we developed slogans in each of our groups to capture our key messages to Hackney Council:

Not getting my vote in 2026 unless: large supermarket, car park, 50% social housing – Hackney Council, you have been warned, listen to us!

Alternative funding model or no development

Council homes on council land

Election issue: No social housing, no vote

Vote 2026: For: Social housing, Big Tesco, Blank: Labour councillors

SOS Save Our Store

Election pressure on Mayor and cabinet, Call for Review, Lobby government for council housing

Oh no! Not another Fashion Hub

The council reveals its options for 55 Morning Lane

In a workshop on the 26th April, Hackney Council invited residents to look at three models of options for how they could redevelop the Tesco site at 55 Morning Lane and to comment using sticky notes. There was no introduction nor any summarising session, and the only questions written down asked people about what they wanted by way of consultation going forward. Informal conversations were encouraged, although key personnel were not easily identified. There was an expectation that public responses would target each display separately, however almost all ignored this, preferring to be unrestricted. In fact, many chose to write at length on large sheets of paper rather than confine themselves to sticky notes. We have become tired of waiting for the council to post information from this workshop, so we are doing it. Below you can see the three models and the feedback on them.

Hackney Council’s three options

There were models and boards explaining each of the three options. Photographs of the boards are below. We cannot see any way that these options were shaped by the consultation process. The two key differences between the community’s vision for the site and the Council’s are the size of the new Tesco store and the proportion of social housing. But instead of presenting options with bigger and smaller supermarkets and more and less social housing, all three designs reflect the Council’s vision. They all have a much smaller Tesco that is the minimum size that the Council is contractually obliged to build, and they all have a more-or-less identical housing mix, with 25.8-26.8% social rent homes, 17.3-17.8% shared ownership properties, and 55.3-56.8% market rate housing

The boards accompanying the designs do not explain how residents’ views expressed in the workshops, survey and other engagement activities have influenced the designs. The rationale is purely practical and financial. Design 1 avoids the expense of basement work which caps the height of the buildings at 8 stories. Design 2 factors in the cost of basement work to allow taller buildings, but caps their heights at 15 stories, matching the only three tower blocks in the area. This means that the projected income from the market housing does not cover the development costs. Design 3 has multiple high rises including one 23-storey tower block and so contains the 500 housing units needed to cover the cost of the basement work.

How residents responded

Below, we have listed and categorised all the comments from members of the public at the workshop. This workshop provided more depth and detail than the first Vision Workshop and elicited responses that reflected this progression. However, the responses only amplified those made in the Vision Workshop and there is no evidence that the community’s red lines have changed. This again shows that the Council has neither genuinely engaged nor listened, and it too has not changed its opinions. Taken as a whole, this makes depressing reading. It appears that the consultation process has not worked despite employing a co-design team.

Our demands for Hackney Council from our public meeting

On 29th March we held a public meeting to talk about the Council’s plans for 55 Morning Lane. Hackney Council are currently consulting residents about this but their three public meetings seem to be less about listening and more about convincing us that there is no choice but to downsize Tesco and fill the site with private flats. At the Morning Lane People’s Space public meeting, we talked about how we can challenge the Council and how we work together to get themto build something that puts people before profit.

Our red lines are:

At least 50% of any new housing on the site must be council housing at social rent.
We need to keep a big Tesco on the site.

The Council must make good on its promise to co-design the site with the local community.

The current big Tesco and car park are local resources. If Hackney Council cannot currently build something that meets residents’ needs and makes our lives better, they should keep the site as it is until they can.
Hackney Council needs to work with us to create an alternative to the developer finance model. Let’s build a model that includes the savings on temporary accomodation and other services you get from build council housing, and that takes a longterm view.

We want to know:

What has the Council learned from the consultation and what has this changed?
What conversations has the Council had with Tesco and what has this changed?
What are the Council’s plans to address the needs of people in temporary accommodation and on the housing waiting list generally and how does the site fit into these?

We will keep campaigning until Hackney Council listens to residents

Our next action is to go to the Council’s final design workshop on Saturday 26th April 11am-1pm in the Dan West Community Hall. This is an important opportunity for all of us who care about the Tesco site in Hackney Central to make our views clear.

If you’d like to get more involved in Morning Lane People’s Space, email us on morninglanepeoplesspace@gmail.com

Hackney Council’s online survey on 55 Morning Lane

Hackney Council has launched an online survey about their redevelopment of the Tesco site at 55 Morning Lane in Hackney Central. We don’t trust the Council and there are big problems with their survey. But we still think it’s helpful for as many people as possible to fill it in because otherwise the Council will try to use the results to justify their plans to replace the current superstore with a much smaller Tesco and to fill the rest of the site with hundreds of private flats. Below, we explain what’s wrong with the Council’s survey and offer a guide to how to respond to it.

What’s wrong with the Council’s online survey

The survey does not mention the three key points about the Council’s plans for the site. They don’t tell us that they want to replace the current Tesco with a much smaller store (about the size of the Well Street Tesco). They don’t tell us that they plan to fill the site with hundreds of private flats that will be unaffordable to most people in Hackney. They don’t tell us that the parking on the site will be massively reduced.

The survey does not ask anything about the class backgrounds of the people who are filling it in. We know that people with different backgrounds and experiences of Hackney have different views on what they want built here. For example, we found that people from working-class backgrounds and people who identify as Black are more likely to prioritise keeping a big supermarket on the site than people from middle-class backgrounds and people who identify as White.

This is NOT a genuine consultation. The Council launched this consultation after they had already briefed the architects. And the architects will have already developed draft designs before it closes in two weeks time. If the Council genuinely cares about what people locally want, it will use the detailed research we in MOPS have done and that includes the views of thousands of local residents. The head architect admitted he has not even read the results of our research.

Advice on how to respond to the Council’s survey

Here’s a link to Hackney Council’s survey.

Question 1 asks what should the top three priorities be for a new development at 55 Morning Lane. If you want cheap housing and shopping put these in the priorities because the Council is looking for excuses to build private flats and downsize Tesco. Similarly, the Council wants to build tower blocks, to gentrify Hackney and to get rid of the car parking. So if you want something different, put that in the priorities.

Here’s two possible ways to fill in the three priorities based on what we have found most residents want.

Council housing at social rents
A supermarket of the same size as the current Tesco
No gentrification

Cheap housing and shopping (council housing and a big Tesco)
A development for local residents (homes for people on the waiting list, shops that provide products for the diversity of Hackney and provide good jobs for us)
A spacious development (no tower blocks or overly dense development, and genuine community spaces where all are welcome)

Question 2 asks about what public or community spaces you would you like to see included in the development and what would encourage you to visit the area more often. Although the question starts with the words “in addition to potential new housing and a supermarket”, it’s an open question so you can talk about them if that’s what matters to you. So if a big supermarket is why you visit the area, tell Hackney Council that. Or if you think the housing should be public not private, tell them that. Another approach is to connect public spaces with housing and shopping. For example, you can ask for gardens and children’s play areas for the social housing residents and places where the customers of a big supermarket can meet.

Question 3 shows a map and asks you to rank access points to the site. The map shows that there will be three very big new buildings on the site but does not explain what these will be or how tall they are going to be. This question is an opportunity to say something about these blocks for example, you could ask Hackney Council to explain to residents what these blocks are going to be and to consult us about them.

Question 4 asks what you would like to see happen at a redevelopment of 55 Morning Lane. It has some pictures – None of these relate to the most important new buildings that are planned – a smaller Tesco and hundreds of private flats. But there is an “Other” box which allows you to reject the options they give you and say whatever you want. You could write that you want the new space to be welcoming to people from all social class and ethnic backgrounds, like the current Tesco and car park are. Or you could talk about the need for space inside and around the blocks of flats, with balconies and communal areas for social housing tennants and shoppers.

Finally we hope you’ll join us at our next public meeting where there will be a chance to talk openly about what we want from the development of 55 Morning Lane. It’s on Saturday 29th March, in the Dan West Community Hall on the Trelawney Estate, with lunch at midday and then discussion from 1-3pm.

Hackney Council’s vision workshop on 55 Morning Lane

On Saturday 7th December amid the xmas parties, Hackney Council held its first workshop on its plans for redeveloping 55 Morning Lane, the Tesco site in Hackney Central.

After years of secrecy, in this workshop we learned a little about our Council’s current thinking, including two key things that contradict what they said previously:

First, Hackney Council have not decided they will redevelop the site. They might sell it in an attempt to recoup the £60 milliion they spent buying it from Tesco in 2017. They have appointed architects and community engagement consultants but both are on 3-month contracts. At the end of these, they will present a set of options for 55 Morning Lane and say how feasible they think each of them is.

Second, the deal between Hackney Council and Tesco defines a minimum size for a new store on the site but not a maximum size. The architects have been tasked to negotiate with Tesco so there is hope that our pressure will work and the earlier plans for a much smaller store will be changed and we can keep a big supermarket in Hackney Central.

Most of the workshop was spent in small groups discussing what we want to see built on 55 Morning Lane. As always, people had some great ideas but after years of talking to residents about what they want to see on the site and doing thousands of surveys, we weren’t surprised to hear again that our community wants cheap, spacious and local-oriented council housing and a big supermarket.

There are three more meetings planned in the new year – one in January and two in February – alongside specific outreach to young people and other community groups. Through these, the architects and engagement consultants will create three options for 55 Morning Lane and assess their feasibility. We, like many of those at Saturday’s workshop, based on past experience, are sceptical about whether residents will genuinely be involved in this process.