All London Boroughs have their challenges, and their advantages, when compared to others in the city, but Islington has some pretty extreme characteristics. With about 180,000 people crammed into under 6 square miles, it is the second most densely populated borough in the country, and has the lowest per capita amount of open space per head of any London Borough.

Despite its trendy and affluent image, Islington is ranked as the 6th most deprived Local Authority in England (out of 354), and has twice the national unemployment average. Most worryingly, perhaps, in a Borough where the average house price is over £330,000, 12% are on income support. Against this background, Islington is young (half the population is aged under 35) diverse (over 100 languages are spoken in our schools) and growing (the Borough’s population is expected to rise by 20% over the next 15 years).

Imaginative, radical and honest strategies are going to be needed to meet these extraordinary local pressures, pressures exacerbated by developments at national and global level - for example climate change and immigration. Of all the Parties, only the Greens are prepared to manage local policies in fundamentally different ways. Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories are essentially offering only to tinker with the overwhelming power of market forces, or promising to run them “more competently”. The Greens believe that in Islington these forces have given us, amongst other things, a clone town centre, disaffected youth and rule by CCTV. “Competence” is no longer enough: we’re going to tear up the rule book.

In the following pages we set out specific policies the Green Party has for Islington. Details of policies on which we are actively campaigning, or where Katie Dawson is working can be found on our campaigns pages, or on Katie’s page.

Fora quick overview of our key proposals,take a look atour Manifesto for Islington

More detail on certain issues is set out in separate subject pages below:

Crime and antisocial behaviour