The COVID-19 pandemic will continue to have a marked impact on civil society in London. At London Plus we are working hard to support the sector through this.

There have been two main parts to our efforts to date. First, we designed and ran the first pan-London survey of how the crisis was affecting the sector in London. This helped people, funders, policy-makers and civil society itself understand and appreciate the strains and impact on organisations’ capacity to operate. We repeated the towards the end of March, highlighting the growing strains. Read the results from survey 1 & 2 below:

Survey 1: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic upon London’s Civil Society
Survey 2: COVID-19: The changing picture
Your feedback: COVID-19: Voices from the Sector

London Plus has also become part of the structure across London coordinating the capital’s response to the crisis. This forms the second part of our efforts. The GLA, London Councils, London Funders, the Red Cross, and others are also part of this.

Through this structure we are able to feed in intelligence about local developments, such as knowledge about local food bank supplies and information about how the volunteers centres are dealing with the surge in volunteers, and their huge effort in getting the local response right so that vulnerable groups get the support they need. A huge thank you to all of our networks and partners who have been helpful in providing this intelligence.

London Plus used the information gathered from our networks to inform the GLA about levels of food levels across London.

As a small part of these efforts, we were included in a quote in a press release from the Mayor. The GLA have also produced a video about the #LondonTogether campaign. 

Resources

London Plus are regularly updating our resource page with useful guides and links, for civil society organisations in London during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

We have also put together a list of resources and available intelligence regarding the impact of COVID-19 on the provision of free school meals.