Hackney Right To Grow

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Category: Pam Warhurst

  • Hackney Council passes a Right to Grow motion

    Hackney Council passes a Right to Grow motion

    Community food growing campaigning group Hackney Right to Grow welcome the passing of a Right to Grow motion at the Hackney Full Council meeting on Wednesday 4th March 2026 and thank especially the proposer Cllr Lynne Troughton, seconder Cllr Gilbert Smyth and Cllr Sarah Young for their support through the whole process. We also thank the other Cllrs from Labour, The Independent Socialist Group and the Green Party who all spoke passionately in favour of the motion and about how important it is for Hackney residents to have access to food growing space.

    The preamble of the motions states “Everyone in Hackney should have access to enough fresh food to feed themselves and their families well and this is all the more challenging during the cost of living crisis. The right to grow will provide a renewed focus on the importance of providing affordable healthy food and sustainable methods of producing the food we eat” and resolves to “Adopt the principle of “right to grow” on council-owned land that is
    considered suitable in agreement with the Council”

    The Right to Grow means there is right or at least a presumption that unused and under-used land can be used for growing food (The Right to Grow motion Hackney has adopted comes from, with adaptions, the national Right to Grow movement, launched by Incredible Edible in 2022 ). Hackney communities have some of the least access to growing space in Britain with 10s of 1000s living in flats, with no access to anywhere to grow, and at the same time some of the highest levels of food poverty, so this is massively needed. Hackney Council has been great in supporting food growing on their housing estates but there are an incredible number, and area, of un- and under-used land in Hackney that could be used for growing food. Urban community food growing has massive benefits not just in getting good healthy food into the mouths of those who most need it, so mitigating food poverty and helping with social justice, and in increasing food resilience come future crises, but also in increasing community engagement, with helping with people’s physical and mental health, and directly confronting climate change by reducing reliance on carbon intensive food production, and providing significant benefits for biodiversity, not only in creating biodiversity hot spots in urban areas, but more importantly by reducing our consumption of food growing in biodiversity destructive modern agriculture.

    Hackney Right to Grow also want to thank Pam Warhurst for starting this whole process and being our inspiration, and the national Right to Grow / Incredible Edible campaign and Sustain / Capital Growth for their support.

    Glyn Harries, one of the Hackney Right to Grow group co-ordinators said “It’s great that Hackney Council have voted to adopt the Right to Grow principle and we hope to see a significant increase in food growing sites in the borough, bringing people together, getting healthy food for those that need it the most, with great biodiversity benefits and helping fight climate change”

    Deba Salim, from The Garden of Earthly Delights and TimetoGrow! and Hackney Right to Grow co-ordinator stated “So pleased this long awaited motion has been passed finally! It’s high time to be growing food locally, and with it, building community resilience”.

    Cllr Sarah Young, Hackney Council Cabinet Member for Climate, Environment and Transport reflected on “powerful speeches on the importance of growing our own food as part of our diverse cultural heritage – growing food that tastes of home in Hackney – as well as enjoying being active, eating well and cheaply and spending time with together and outdoors while we garden. She also thanked Cllr Lynne Troughton and the Hackney Right To Grow group for all their “…work on this. It was so good to end our full council with unanimous support for the right to grow across the council chamber. We have so many great gardening groups on Hackney’s estates and this motion starts the process of spreading the right to grow throughout the borough. Bring it on.”

    Cllr Lynne Troughton added “I am so proud to have brought this motion which confirms our commitment to social and environmental justice. I look forward to working further with the campaigners that sparked the flame in me to get this over the line.”

  • What if we had the Right to Grow?

    What if we had the Right to Grow?

    Up and down the country public land is being left unloved, costing our local authorities money to care for and giving nothing back to the community in return. Community groups like Incredible Edible have shown that with a little imagination, bravery and TLC these parcels of land can be turned into oases for food and wildlife.

    It’s time we were afforded a Right to Grow; an opportunity to take up our seed packets, spades and watering cans, and nourish our communities, without all the hoop-jumping and red-tape so often encountered by those who want to get on and grow food with and for their community. The Right to Grow calls for a new relationship that builds trust between councils and communities, and sees authorities recognise the immense value that community food growers bring to the places we call home. With special thanks to University of Sheffield and Research England for funding the production of this film.

    🌱 Find out more about the Right to Grow: https://www.incredibleedible.org.uk/w…

    🌱 Report: Benefits of the Right to Grow: https://www.incredibleedible.org.uk/w…

    🌱 Council briefing on the Right to Grow: https://www.incredibleedible.org.uk/w…

    🌱 How Right to Grow supports existing council policies: https://www.incredibleedible.org.uk/w…

    🌱 Join the Right to Grow mailing list and Learning Network: https://mailchi.mp/incredibleedible/n…

  • ‘The system is the problem, not people’

    ‘The system is the problem, not people’

    This article in the Guardian, by Pam Warhurst, is so good I want to copy it all, but won’t, but do read it! This is transformative stuff, in a world where it seems hard to see where we can achieve change at the grassroots, Pam shows how!

    “‘The system is the problem, not people’: how a radical food group spread round the world … Incredible Edible’s guerrilla gardening movement encourages people to take food-growing – and more – into their own hands”

    “What is the solution? Incredible Edible is calling for a “right to grow”, which would make permission to plant on public land automatic, and create obligations for local authorities to facilitate it. In that is the kernel of a much bigger idea – one that goes beyond food.

    “This is saying: look, in a time of crisis, [at] what we, the people, can do, and how we can use land differently to get better outcomes,” Warhurst says. “You could theoretically apply it to energy, you could theoretically apply it to housing, you could theoretically apply it to a lot of things, but I’m only doing food.”

    What this is about, she says, is nothing less than “a new relationship between the citizen and the state”. Incredible Edible has already demonstrated it can make a material difference to people’s lives.
    “We’re repurposing people power and we’re repurposing land, and that’s the bottom line,” she says. “We’ve got oodles of both of them … just respect people and create frameworks that allow them to just crack on and do these things instead of having to fight the system all the time.”

    And with that, Warhurst says, there is hope for the future.
    “God knows I wish that we weren’t in the state we are in as a planet, and I wish we weren’t in the state we’re in as a nation. But we are where we are and there’s no point having a moan about it – you’ve got to roll up your sleeves and do something.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/13/radical-food-group-incredible-edible-guerrilla-gardening