The Council is not planning to sell off any playgrounds or schools. Hackney, like most of London, is facing a shortage of school places. We need to create nearly 500 extra primary and secondary places by 2020, and land and funding are extremely limited.

To ensure we can provide local school places for local children, we are looking at how we can remodel the school sites we own. It's our priority that children in Hackney should be taught in schools built to high standards, and as we are now less able to rely on Government funding for capital projects, in some locations we are looking at co-locating education and residential developments. This will allow us to sell the homes to fund school building projects across the borough, while maintaining the freehold of the sites.

There is no other way to ensure we have enough school places. Hackney has a proud record of delivering good quality schools, through its Building Schools for the Future programme, and we are looking forward to moving forward with this next phase of work.

Find out more about the plans at www.hackney.gov.uk/bsf and https://www.learningtrust.co.uk/schools/Pages/Consultations.aspx