News on Camden Evening and Night Time

We would like to thank everyone who took part in our citizens’ assembly for their commitment and colossal efforts.

For the 46 assembly members, selected at random to broadly reflect our borough’s diversity, it was an intense yet empowering experience. Here’s just a few thoughts they shared with us:

“I always considered myself an isolated individual. Now I feel that my voice is important and can positively impact change”

“As a grass roots music venue operator, I feel valued, recognised and listened to”

“It was nice to see that getting citizens’ involved was genuine and to see how different voices have been heard and taken onboard throughout the process”

“I finally feel like a hopeful citizen of Camden”

During the sessions assembly members heard evidence, deliberated, and formed a vision, set principles, recommendations, calls to action, and measures of success for the Council, partners and business operating in the evening and night-time and others living and working in the evening and night-time in Camden.

We commissioned involve – a public participation charity, to support pre-assembly engagement, provide lead facilitation for our citizens’ assembly, which took place in February and March and produce a report which will help inform our strategy. The report represents, the work and conclusions of the assembly members.

We also commissioned UCL to be our learning partner and carry out an independent evaluation of the citizens’ assembly. UCL did this by interviewing people who participated in the citizens’ assembly to understand how they felt about the process and interviewed Camden and involve staff working on the project.

What’s next?

Camden has now published the final report, containing a narrative summary of why we held a citizens’ assembly, how we ran it and the key findings.

The assembly provided in-depth feedback on a draft vision and agreed eight themes:

Our next steps will involve sharing the report and recommendations with key services within the Council and our partners, including Metropolitan Police, Transport for London and health services. We will explore with them how to balance the assemblies’ ambitions with practical considerations for service delivery, to shape the existing and future service design.

Drafting a vision

We want our evening and night-time to be a better experience for everyone living, working, visiting and running a business in Camden. Our strategy will set out our long-term vision for an inclusive, safe and diverse evening and night-time offer in Camden that responds to the different needs and interests of our residents, businesses, workers and visitors to the borough.

Informed by the report we will then begin developing Camden’s very first evening and night-time strategy.

Look out for further updates on this site.