About us

Our vision for a fairer Islington

Since our pioneering Fairness Commission in 2010 Islington has been a borough with one clear vision:

We’re determined to make Islington fairer and to create a place where everyone, whatever their background, has the same opportunity to reach their potential and enjoy a good quality of life.

Young boy wearing a yellow top laying on the floor with his dad reading a book

Our priorities

To help bring our vision to life we have four clear objectives:

A house icon to signify decent and genuinely affordable homes for allA decent home for everyone: building new council homes, being a good landlord, standing up for private renters, and preventing homelessness

 

Icon of two hands shaking to signify jobs and opportunity, and empowermentA local economy that works for everyone: supporting people into decent and secure jobs and training, creating an economy that works for all, and ensuring young people have the best possible start 

Alert Icon to signify a safer borough for allA safe place for everyone and everyone playing their part: reducing the spread of Covid-19 and supporting those who need our help, working with partners to cut crime and ASB, tackling complex problems, and championing and celebrating our diversity

Icon of two trees to signify a greener and cleaner IslingtonA greener, cleaner, healthier place to live: keeping Islington clean and tidy, encouraging greener travel, cleaning up the air we breathe, and tackling the climate crisis by committing to a net zero carbon Islington by 2030.

Delivering fairness has been an increasing challenge not least because of government cuts to our budget over the last ten years. We’ve continued to make strides towards our goal, but the devastating impact of Covid-19 has laid bare the deep inequalities that still exist in our borough and we are focused on working hard to rebuild a fairer Islington in the coming years.

Our values and behaviours

We want to build an organisation where employees feel valued, inspired and empowered to help us achieve our goals and provide the best services possible to our residents.

We are also committed to establishing a ‘Be Islington’ work ethic where we ask our employees to play their part in working together for a fairer borough and to always be collaborative, be ambitious, be resourceful, and be empowering (‘CARE’).

Our commitment to challenging inequality

We are committed to tackling inequality, racism and injustice and creating a fairer borough for all. In order to do this, we need to set the example by being a fair employer and creating a workplace environment, which is free from discrimination, racism and inequality.

We want to celebrate and embrace our differences by:

  •  Ensuring our workforce is representative of the people we work on behalf of, our residents

  • Creating equitable working environments and diverse teams

  • Understanding our residents in order to design and deliver services that help tackle inequality and improve life chances for our residents

  • Getting to know people and their differences

  • Interpreting issues and concerns from a cultural perspective and address situations or problems from the points-of-view of multiple cultures

  • Supporting people with long-term health conditions and/or disabilities

  • Recognising the value of flexible working to support staff where possible

Fairer Together – a new partnership for Islington

Many residents in Islington face deep social challenges, driven by deprivation and inequality. These can include complex and multiple problems with housing, employment, offending, domestic violence, mental health and substance abuse and so have repeated contact with our services and those of our partners – health services, job centres, the criminal justice system and housing providers.

We believe that through prevention, early intervention and supporting our communities to be more resilient we can create successful solutions to these problems. But we cannot do it alone.

The partnership aims to create:

  • A shared approach to strategy and investment
  • Shared principles of ways of working – the Fairer Together Way
  • Integrated Locality Teams to ensure more joined up support for local people
  • New Community Networks to bring together key players in each locality around common goals and priorities.

Working together in this way will allow us to see the big picture across all organisations’ service provision – allowing us to identify opportunities to add value, improve outcomes, and reduce duplication and costs.

fairer together logo

Useful documents