The Health and Wellbeing Board of Hackney Council met on Thursday 22 October 2026, endorsing recommendations for community-led needs assessments and building social capital, and approving plans for the integration of libraries into neighbourhood health initiatives. The Board also endorsed the process and outline structure for the forthcoming City and Hackney Neighbourhood Health Plan.

Community-led Needs Assessment

The Board endorsed the recommendations from a Community-led Needs Assessment (CLNA) which focused on the health and wellbeing priorities of Black African adults in Hackney. This assessment, a partnership between the City and Hackney Public Health Team and the Community African Network (CAN)¹, employed a strengths-based approach to understand how health is shaped by individuals' experiences, relationships, and community connections. The CLNA identified four key themes: community connection, physical geography and spaces, mistrust in the healthcare system, and identity and discrimination. Twelve recommendations were developed, covering areas such as sharing health information effectively, supporting community leaders, improving NHS and Council staff understanding of residents' lives, and ensuring safe healthcare access for those with insecure immigration status. The Board agreed that these recommendations would be taken forward as a partnership, with appropriate ownership and next steps identified for implementation.

Building Social Capital for Health

The Board adopted recommendations aimed at embedding social capital as an explicit strategic outcome within the emerging City and Hackney Neighbourhood Health Plan. These recommendations stem from learning from recent social capital pilot projects. Key proposals include co-producing neighbourhood health plans with communities, adopting an asset-based community development (ABCD)² model, and identifying opportunities for better coordination of community participation activities. The Board also agreed to explore neighbourhood-level participatory budgeting and micro-grants, and to establish consistent system-wide policies for fairly compensating community members and resident leaders for their time and expertise.

The Role of Hackney Libraries in Neighbourhood Health

The Board resolved to formally recognise and include library services within local health, care, and neighbourhood strategies. This move aims to expand community-based preventative support and address social determinants of health, such as loneliness, digital exclusion, and mental wellbeing. The decision also endorses plans to collaborate with Board partners to co-design sustainable programmes and develop proposals to scale successful place-based pilots borough-wide. Furthermore, the Board agreed to establish two-way referral pathways between health professionals and library teams, integrating cultural and wellbeing offers into social prescribing registers. Hackney Libraries are seen as vital community anchors, offering a range of services from health advice and digital access to creative health programmes, effectively acting as neighbourhood hubs for integrated health and care.

Next Steps in Partnership Governance and Neighbourhood Health Plan

The Board endorsed the approach for Part 2 of the City and Hackney Neighbourhood Health Plan, as outlined in Appendix 2 of the reports pack. This plan is a requirement for Health and Wellbeing Boards and is being developed in response to the 2026 Health Bill. The plan aims to set out local priorities for population health and how these will be addressed, aligning with Hackney Council and the City of London's neighbourhoods programme. The process for developing this plan involves a Neighbourhood Health Plan Working Group, with a target completion date of March 2027. The plan will cover a period up to March 2030 and will incorporate principles of equity, prevention, personalisation, co-production, and a focus on wider determinants of health.