London,
28
October
2009
|
23:00
Europe/London

Apply online to give a facelift to your favourite Hackney place

For the first time, the Council is calling on residents to get online and nominate the places in Hackney, which most need sprucing up.

Community groups, charities and individuals are invited to suggest an outdoor space, street or building which a team of offenders could help restore to its former glory through hard graft. The work would be part of Hackney s contribution to the Home Office’s successful Community Payback scheme.

The London Probation Service and Hackney Council will consider all requests for jobs, so long as the work visibly benefits the community; and is demanding, as befits the offenders’ obligations to pay back the community for their crimes.

Cllr Alan Laing, Member of Cabinet for Neighbourhoods said: “Residents are bound to have a favourite place in Hackney that needs a lick of paint or perhaps an entire facelift. This is their chance to speak up. The Council agrees with the Police that offenders on this scheme owe it to Hackney residents to pay back some of what they have taken from our community.”

The first Community Payback project – chosen as one of five suggested by Hackney residents in April 2009 – is now complete. At the request of residents, offenders offered up to 1,000 hours of unpaid time to cleaning up the Lea Bridge Tow Path in the area next to Springfield Park, which had become overgrown with weeds. The Tow Path has now been cleared and made safe for walkers.

Since January of this year, the team also completed work on around thirty Hackney Homes gardens, which older people were struggling to manage and maintain themselves. The Hackney Community Payback operations group will meet regularly to decide on which resident-proposed projects to take on.

Groups or individuals wishing to nominate a building or outdoor space can tell the Council why, where and how you’d like to see it done, by clicking on: www.hackney.gov.uk/communitypayback and filling in the online form.

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