Supporting the VCS C19 recovery

Tower Hamlets is looking at how we can continue to sustain the VCS and support its recovery as we move into a new phase in the crisis and beyond.  I am sure we are not alone and I am therefore doing a round robin to see whether there are ideas and good practice we might all share.  I am very happy to collate and circulate responses to everyone.

The particular areas we are looking at are,

  1. Flexibility around funding agreements/contracts with VCS providers;
  2. Rent holidays/deferred payments for VCS organisations in council premises;
  3. Emergency funding provision;
  4. Retaining volunteers who have responded to C19 appeals;
  5. Support for non-council funded VCS organisations, and
  6. Learning from new ways of working that have been developed during the crisis.

I am working to a tight deadline of the end of next week.  I will try to circulate the summary of responses early the following week.  If you are not able to respond within that time frame, I am happy to collate further responses and send out an updated version later on as well.

As a starter for ten, for those of you still thinking about support for organisations leasing premises from you, this is the LBTH initial response, http://democracy.towerhamlets.gov.uk/documents/s166363/IMD%20Community%20Organisations%20Rent%20Relief%20revised%20cleared%20report.pdf.  We are now looking at a month by month extension with slightly tighter criteria around financial need.

Many thanks in advance.

Best wishes

David