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Hackney Council has breached Freedom of Information law by failing to meet its own extended deadline for releasing internal correspondence over its controversial move to give an Israeli city until the third anniversary of the 7 October Hamas attack to respond to a proposal to end their twinning relationship.
In July, Hackney Council, which is controlled by the Green Party after it won an overwhelming majority in the local council elections held in May, voted to cut ties between the borough and the Israeli city. Subsequently, the elected mayor of Hackney, the Green Party’s Zoe Garbett, wrote to Yona Yahav, the Mayor of Haifa, informing him of the intention to break the twinning between the two cities.
Garbett said that “Hackney and Haifa have shared a civic bond since 1968; however, in my view the relationship no longer reflects the strategic priorities of the council.”
Describing how “maintaining a civic connection in Israel is at odds with our anti-racist values”, Garbett told Yahav that she was “writing to formally invite the views of your administration on the proposal to terminate the twinning agreement. I’d be grateful if you could send me any views on this matter by e-mail…by 7 October 2026.”
After widespread disgust over the choice of date, given the 7 October massacre carried out by Hamas, Garbett issued a follow-up letter in which she described the date as “a deeply regretful oversight”.
Jewish News submitted a freedom of information request to Hackney Council last month, asking for any e-mails, whatsapp messages or other communications between council employees, councillors or any others on three issues: the letter sent to Mayor Yahav, the deadline of 7 October included in the official letter from Mayor Garbett to Mayor Yahav, the decision for the consultation into the detwinning process ending on 7 October.
In August, the council responded to inform Jewish News that it be “extending the deadline for this request by a further 20 working days”, saying that it was “considering the Public Interest Test (PIT) for applying exemption s36, Prejudice to the Effective Conduct of Public Affairs”, an extension which is permitted under the Freedom of Information Act.” It specified that the new end date by which time it needed to respond to the FOI request was Monday 28 September.
When Jewish News contacted the council on Monday, the response from the Information Governance Team confirmed that the information requested had been collated, but that “redactions” which had been required were undergoing “quality review”, and that the full response would be received “by Friday at the latest”.
Despite Jewish News writing to the council again this morning, no response has been received.
In its 2026 Manifesto, Hackney Green Party wrote: “We will bring greater participation, transparency, communication and accountability back to Hackney’s local government.”
In Zoe Garbett’s 2023 pledge for the mayoralty, the first sentence included a commitment “to open the council up to more public scrutiny”.
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