For over a year now we have been inviting people in Lambeth to let us know how the cost of living crisis is affecting them through our borough-wide survey, along with a range of other local groups and organisations including Centre 70, Citizens Advice Merton and Lambeth, Age UK Lambeth, Brixton Bugle, Brixton Buzz and our friends at Lambeth Larder

We have continued to work with these partners and promote the need for greater joining-up of services, more outreach services, more specialist services. Effectively, more of everything that works (!) and that means that we and other partners at the frontline of demand are able to respond effectively to the challenges persons needing our services are experiencing

Where possible, we have sought additional funding to safeguard or expand existing services and to explore and develop new ones. We are very pleased then to acknowledge the contribution of the Government’s Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund, which is being delivered by The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest community funder in the UK. This new funding of £31,095 will help support our work by supporting the salary costs of a Community Outreach Adviser as well as some of the infrastructure costs of our award-winning Online Legal Clinic, a vital service for Lambeth that we have been holding together and running without any funding at all now for some time

A big thank you to the Government and The National Lottery Community Fund for making this possible and for contributing not just to our work, but to all the other similar organisations around the country also trying to do right by their communities