Hackney Council is carrying out an appraisal for estate cleaning and ground maintenance services, and are considering three options:

1. Full outsourcing of contractors for both services across Hackney Homes.

2. Bringing all estate cleaning services back in-house as the external contract elapses.
3. Entry an effective partnership with another organisation following an appropriate procurement process.

Hackney Tenants' and Residents' Associations have been consulted on our views, and naturally, ours voted for option 2.

Usually, despite running a 'consultation', the Council has a preferred option. For example, on the 'consultation' which led to ALMO a couple of years back, the ballot paper may as well have read "do you want ALMO or do you want to live in a hovel?". This one isn't so obvious, but my guess is that number 3 could be their preferred option. The clue is that it is the only one that uses adjectives - it's an option to enter not into a "partnership" but into an "effective partnership", not just a "procurement process" but an "appropriate procurement process".

We shall see. But if the Council plumps for either option 1 or 3, then we will need to campaign against privatisation and for estate cleaning services to be Council-run.