CVA has been assured by the Council that it will protect the Community Fund – its main source of funding for VCS service-providers – for another year, into 2023.

In an announcement to her Cabinet last night, Councillor Hamida Ali confirmed that the Council has not forgotten the game-changing role played by our VCS during the pandemic – and will find ways of achieving its financial targets without cutting into its main VCS budget. 

The Leader’s announcement came as an endorsement of the pivotal role needing to be played by Croydon’s VCS in the borough’s recovery from Covid19 and financial collapse. In a show of leadership, Councillor Ali confirmed that in protecting VCS budgets for another year, the Council will take a strategic approach in working with us to mitigate the impact of any future cuts needing to be made after the current Community Fund programme ends in 2023. This translates into two actions – speeding up the shift in investment from the One Croydon Alliance to VCS providers; and building on our great track record in levering funding from outside the borough into Croydon’s VCS.

This represents a strategic, long-term approach to renewal that revives one of the only positives to come out of 2020 – the massive affirmation of community spirit and volunteering in Croydon and the potential this revealed for a transformative redesign of local services. Croydon’s VCS – from its very grassroots to its most established delivery-groups – demonstrated its indispensability during the pandemic to our most vulnerable communities. But not only that, in tackling food poverty, social isolation and a mental health crisis, Croydon’s VCS showed the innovation needed to make local people active players in their communities – and leaders in managing Croydon’s recovery. From the mutual-aid groups and the foodbanks to the grassroots BME groups leading the fightback against knife-crime, Croydon’s local communities are in the vanguard of that recovery – and committed to finding new ways of moving people away from service-dependency and towards independence.

Another positive to come out of Covid19 was our determination to reset how we do business – how we build on 2020/21’s legacy of self-help and community asset-building in Croydon to make sure that it’s not all down to the Council to manage our social and economic recovery. We have a strategy in place - the Healthy Communities Together programme - to mobilise local communities through collective action, from the streets and neighbourhoods up. We are Croydon and we’re all in this together – not just when world pandemics strike, but for the long term.

Councillor Hamida Ali will speak at this CVSA meeting at 10am

Read the CVSA Agenda 9/12/2021

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