Results summary

Who's part of hackneymatters?
The panel is made up of 2540 Hackney residents from all walks of life.  You are a part of a panel that is made up of slightly more women than men, a good spread of people of all ages - with most in the 35-54 age bracket, a  mix of people living in different types of accommodation and from across the whole borough. It's tricky to recruit a panel that completely matches up with who lives in Hackney, but we're not far off.  We're making efforts to recruit more people from some groups, but make sure that all of your feedback is 'weighted' which means that the final results reflect the views of all sections of the community. 

The results of the first survey are in...
Earlier this year, we asked you to take part in the first HackneyMatters survey.  We wanted to find out what you thought about living in Hackney and how clean you think your local area is. Many thanks to everyone who took part. You provided us with the interesting results you can read about below:

What do you think about Hackney?
You overwhelmingly told us you think Hackney is Diverse, Lively, Noisy and Up and Coming. Safe was the least selected option and tells us a lot about how you feel about living in the borough. An identical number of panelists told us Hackney is both Friendly and Dangerous.   

I love Hackney
When asked if you were proud to live in Hackney, 70% of you answered positively.  The areas of Hackney with the proudest residents are Shoreditch and Stoke Newington, but it's fair to say that most people feel proud about where they live.

And you love Hackney because...
The top three reasons you gave us for being proud of Hackney were because of its Diversity, Parks and Open Spaces and Community Spirit.   A significant number of you also cited Amenities, Safety, Transport links, Restaurants and the People. This was also reflected in the many places you would be happy to take friends and family to in Hackney.  The top three places are Clissold Park, Broadway Market and the Hackney Empire.

Even more encouraging is when asked where you would not take a friend or family member, the majority told us ‘Nowhere', meaning that most don't avoid any particular area.  However, areas that were most frequently stated to avoid were Clapton (8%), Dalston (11%) and Mare Street (8%)

What makes you less proud of your local area?
The most common answer to this question was dirt and grime.  This includes litter, fly-posting and dog fouling. It is obvious that local environment quality is an important issue for Hackneymatters panelists.  Other concerns were:
• Crime (18%)
• Unsafe streets (16%)
• Anti Social Behaviour (15%)
• Youth gangs (14%)
• Traffic and parking offences (11%)

Cleanliness
Just over half said that you are satisfied with the cleanliness of your local area (55%) but a notable proportion of your are Fairly or Very Dissatisfied. Of all the environmental issues we gave you to choose from, Fly-tipping and Litter were cited as the two biggest problems in Hackney. These were followed closely by Vandalism and Graffiti.

What makes an area look bad?
Of the most popular responses, the majority of you told us that ‘rubbish lying about on the streets' is the main thing that makes an area look untidy (57%). This was followed by Fly-tipping (20%), Poorly Maintained Shops (19%) and Dog Mess (17%).   Most of your criticism was leveled at irresponsible behaviour of people but 9% told us that our refuse collection services could work better. 

What makes an area look good?
We showed you pictures of various streets  and asked you to rate their cleanliness.  As expected, your answers told us that litter makes areas look unclean, however, you highlighted that builders' materials, overflowing skips, poorly maintained pavements and shop fronts are also detrimental to a local area.   For example, 82% scored a pavement with new paving and no litter as Clean, yet a pavement with cracked and damaged stone was only satisfactory to 52% of the panel.

Whose rubbish is it anyway?
We asked you questions about litter because we wanted to assess different attitudes to rubbish. Promisingly, 96% of you agree that we all have a duty to keep our streets clean, but who do you think is most responsible? 51% replied told us People who live in Hackney are most responsible, followed by 36% who told us Hackney Council should bear the most responsibility.

How do you feel about litter?
You are annoyed by people who drop litter (78% agreed with this statement) and the majority of you take rubbish home instead of dropping it (87%). However, it is interesting to balance this with the 24% who do not like to admit to dropping litter on the streets and the 11% who admit they will drop litter if no bin is available.

Who needs to do more?
When asked who needs to do more to improve the streets in Hackney, 76% told us people who live in Hackney need to do more and 53% told us Hackney Council should take more action.  You also think that Businesses (37%), Parents (28%) and Young People (34%) could do more to make Hackney better.

We also asked you how we could encourage people to help keep Hackney Clean. The most popular suggestions were:
• Provide more bins (23%)
• Fines for Environmental Crimes (18%)
• Increasing Civic Pride (12%)
• Education (10%)

The majority of you said that Education and ‘providing more bins' would be the two most effective ways of improving streets in Hackney. You also see more enforcement as being effective, as Wardens on the street and ‘on the spot fines' proved popular options too.

Hackney Council and Hackney Services
75% of you tell us that you would be likely to contact the Hackney Council Waste Line to report a streets problem, but only 6% declared they would report fly-tipping, littering or dog fouling to the Council.  This made us very keen to assess your knowledge of fines currently available for anti social behaviour in Hackney. Over 80% of respondents were aware of fines for fly tipping, dog fouling and fly posting. This dropped to under 70% for dropping litter, playing music loudly and dropping cigarette butts.

For more information about how to access information about these services, please click here