How the Council works
In this introduction to the Council you can find out about the directly elected Mayor and who runs the Council. In the other Council and Democracy pages you can get more detail and find out about your other elected representatives and how you can vote for them, along with how the Council is performing and future plans and strategies.
The Council - at a glance
Mayor of Hackney - Jules Pipe
Chief Executive - Tim Shields
The Speaker of Hackney Council - Cllr Susan Fajana-Thomas
The Mayor
A new political system was introduced to Hackney in 2002, which involves Hackney residents voting for a directly elected Mayor. The Mayor selects some of the Councillors to be part of his Cabinet. Together, they decide what policies should be put before full council for a vote. Mayor and Councillors are elected every four years.
The Chief Executive
The work of the Council is implemented by Council Officers - these are staff who are not elected and are not party political. The person who is in overall charge of these staff is the Chief Executive. The Chief Executive is responsible for the strategic overview of all Council Services and for leading the Council's Core Management Team in ensuring the Mayor's strategic priorities are met.
The Speaker
The Speaker of Hackney Council performs a ceremonial and civic role and is a serving councillor elected to the office of Speaker for one year by fellow Council members at their Annual Meeting.
Officer accountability
All councils must identify three statutory officers - the Head of Paid Service, the Monitoring Officer, and the Chief Finance Officer. These posts have special powers and duties imposed on them to intervene where an authority is acting unlawfully.
In Hackney the Head of Paid Service is the Chief Executive, the Monitoring Officer is the Head of Law and the Chief Finance Officer is the Director of Finance.
The functions of the statutory posts are set out in Article 13 of the Council's constitution.
Page updated: 26 May 2011
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