Updates from the team behind 'Building Strong Communities'

As we emerge from the pandemic, loneliness is an experience that many of us now understand from a different perspective. When restrictions stopped us from coming together, we had to adapt to new ways of connecting.

City Hall has commissioned research to explore how severe loneliness affects our communities. The result is a report on severe loneliness in London.

The report looks at:

• what other factors are often associated with severe loneliness
• which groups of Londoners are more likely to experience severe loneliness
• what’s already being done to tackle the problem
• ideas for reducing loneliness and increasing social connection across the capital.

What is severe loneliness?

Severe loneliness means experiencing loneliness most or all of the time.

Factors associated with severe loneliness

The report identifies five situations that are often found with Londoners who experience severe loneliness:

1. having a very low income
2. going through life changes or being new in London
3. being single or living alone
4. feeling different or experiencing prejudice
5. being Deaf or disabled.

Effects of severe loneliness

It is debilitating in many ways:

• When people are severely lonely, it can feel impossible to connect and form relationships with others. They are then isolated and don’t get the contact and support they need.
• Experiencing severe loneliness over a long time has harmful effects on health.
• There are also high costs for the economy – for example, because of the impact on health services and on work productivity.

Who is most likely to experience severe loneliness?

While 8% of the general population of London reported being severely lonely, the figures were higher for certain groups, including:

• 15% of LGBTQ+ Londoners
• 12% of single parents
• 12% of young Londoners
• 18% of low-income Londoners
• 18% of Deaf and disabled Londoners
• up to 14% of Black, Asian and minority ethnic Londoners.

COVID-19 and severe loneliness

The pandemic has made severe loneliness and its inequalities worse.

This is because of:

• deepening racial and social injustices
• an increasingly hostile environment for migrants, refugees and other marginalised communities
• extreme pressure on vital statutory services and civil society.

How to tackle severe loneliness

The report says we need to address the root causes of loneliness as well as supporting people who are already severely lonely or isolated.

It proposes four areas of action:

1. make a massive improvement in London’s social connectedness
2. redesign all services to include kindness
3. rethink who we target with loneliness interventions in London
4. treat structural factors, like poverty, as health risks.

The report also highlights the importance of the government taking action to tackle the causes of severe loneliness through:

• more investment in public services
• a more empowering benefits system
• better support for migrants and refugees.

What’s next?

The new report will help to inform work in the charity, local government, funding and civil society sectors.

When the new Survey of Londoners is released later this year, there will be another chance to analyse how loneliness in London has changed since the pandemic.

Keep an eye out for our emails with updates from the Building Strong Communities mission.

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Strong communities played a vital role in the response to the pandemic, which you told us previously too. But, what are the key factors of a strong community? 

To find out, the team leading the recovery mission ‘Building Strong Communities’ commissioned the Young Foundation to explore what factors make up strong communities and develop a way to measure this, to ensure it is understood and valued.  

The Young Foundation have worked with communities and civil society organisations, through workshops and Talk London discussions, and with a steering group of experts to develop a shared definition of civic strength and a set of factors that contribute to this.  Where possible, data has then been identified which can help with measuring each of the factors, allowing us to begin to measure the strength of communities across London. 

This report and tool was published on 6 October.  

You can explore the first iteration of the index and the report here. 

How to use the Civic Strength Index? 

The index can be used by communities, civil society, policymakers, funders and commissioners to:  

• provide a new lens for local authorities and community organisations to understand the strengths of their communities and how best to build on them.
• understand how factors of community strength interact and change depending on other factors which are measured through existing datasets (such as the Index of Multiple Deprivation, Living Costs and Food Survey).  
• support local and pan-London organisations to identify areas of opportunity to share good practice, fill gaps in provision, and respond to the needs of communities. 

What’s next? 

The first version of the Civic Strength Index is by no means complete. We are confident in the definition of Civic Strength and the factors which contribute to it, as set out in the report. However, there are still some gaps in available data, preventing us from having a complete and robust picture of the distribution of civic strength across the capital.

As we move into the next phase of developing and building out the Civic Strength Index, we will respond to the calls to action set out in the report and work to:  

• fill the data gaps identified to make the evidence base sitting under the index more robust.   
• explore and work with different audiences to get people using and engaging with the index as it grows. 
• develop a method for maintaining the index. 

Thanks again for taking part and contributing to this conversation. We will keep you posted on further updates and opportunities to have your say. 

Our mission’s flagship event of the year, the Festival of Ideas, came to an end on 23 July. The hugely successful festival explored the individual and collective vision for strong communities across London, unearthing activity already taking place and generating ideas and priorities for the mission.

A partnership of 12 organisations delivered the festival and saw more than 4,000 Londoners take part in 104 events exploring the role of community hubs and the future of strong communities. Our Talk London survey and discussion threads received over 1,000 contributions.

You can read about some of the fantastic events that took place in our Snapshot from around the city blog post.

We also announced the second round of grant recipients from the Community Spaces at Risk Fund and the expanded Culture and Community Spaces at Risk programme. The expanded programme is in direct response to the Covid-19 crisis and the threats to community infrastructure. It is focused on protecting diverse-led grassroots community organisations, with 75 per cent led by underrepresented groups and 46 per cent operating in the most deprived areas.

Finally, we’ve now launched our ‘In this together’ toolkit for Londoners who want to support their neighbours and strengthen their communities. If you took action to support your local community during the pandemic and want to continue, then this toolkit is for you. 

What next? 

We’re now working with hosts and partners of the Festival of Ideas to collectively analyse the brilliant insights generated from the events and discussion threads to help further shape and drive our mission.

All the insights will be used to support the following:

• An online exhibition celebrating the events, ideas and people that came together for the festival. To access, please use the password: community
• Publication of a zine reflecting activities which took place throughout the festival, with artist interpretations and event host contributions included
• Insight workshops to weave together the findings from across the festival

In May, we asked you to tell us what makes a strong community. Your responses have been vital in helping us develop The London Civic Strength Index to measure the strength of communities across London and ultimately offer support where it’s needed. Check back in with us soon when we’ll be sharing the published report. 

From March to June we have been asking you to share your ideas to reimagine London to understand your views on the future of your local community groups and facilities. You told us your views across a range of community areas on space, place, activity and much more. 

You shared interesting ideas on how to improve existing spaces and services as well as imagined new ways of improving community life. Some of what you shared includes: 

• More informal and formal spaces. 
• More indoor spaces for community activity. 
• Expanding existing outdoor space for cultural and physical activities. 
• Ways to bring together older and younger generations. 
• Community food gardens, fridges and food enterprise zones. 

We’ve also asked you to explore what makes a strong community, ranking qualities of strong communities that make up strong and resilient communities. You’ve told us that the most important include: 

• People feeling secure and happy where they live  
• People feeling a sense of responsibility towards improving their community  
• Strong relationships existing between people in the community.  

Across the two discussions it is clear communities are thinking about how to improve on the spaces, services and places they come together. Alongside this, the importance of relationships and connections between people in creating strong communities is clear.  

To build on our mission objective we are now seeking to understand how Londoners view community hubs and how we can deliver them collectively. 

“By 2025 all Londoners will have access to a community hub ensuring they can volunteer, get support and build strong networks.” 

That is why we have launched the London Festival of Ideas to explore our individual and collective visions and plans for building strong communities in London. 

We want to understand what a community hub means to you. At their core ‘hubs’ go beyond physical spaces and are about providing Londoners with access to support, knowledge and the ability to participate confidently in community life. 

Tell/show us how, when and where your communities: 

• Come together and have a sense of belonging 
• Network and participate in community life 
• Access support and services 
• Learn and develop ideas 

As well a series of Festival activities you can attend and explore these questions – you can respond via our discussion here on Talk London.  

This discussion closed on 23 July 2021.

Welcome to the second update from the Building Strong Communities (BSC) mission team. We are pleased to announce that Natalie Creary, Director, Black Thrive has joined as a permanent mission co-chair, joining Yolande Burgess of London Councils who remains interim co-chair.

Lots of work has taken place since our last update across all mission programmes and projects. In our last blog we told you that we were planning in-depth engagement activities with Londoners to develop on our mission objective:

“By 2025 all Londoners will have access to a community hub ensuring they can volunteer, get support and build strong networks.”

We are pleased to announce we have launched the London Festival of Ideas to explore our individual and collective visions and plans for building strong communities in London. The festival’s objectives are:

1. To develop a shared definition of a Community Hub.
2. Convene a space for partnership and collaboration.
3. Identify activities taking place across the city that contribute to the mission’s objective.

How can you get involved?

Visit our webspace for more information on the festival and how to get involved - we are inviting everyone to be involved, to host activities, events, conversations and celebrations which are designed with your community in mind.

• To learn more - sign up to our information sessions here.
• To attend an event- browse listings of events our partners have arranged here.
• To host an event - read our toolkit with tips on how to organise and run a conversation.
• For access support in hosting an event - visit our access grants page for informal groups and organisations with a turnover of less that £75k to host their own festival activity. 

London Civic Strength Index

We are also excited to tell you that our commissioned partner, the Young Foundation, have been doing extensive work to develop the London Civic Strength Index and there is now a chance for you to have your say. The London Civic Strength Index is a key to the Building Strong Communities mission. It will help us develop a shared understanding of what a strong community is, and how we measure this across London. Once the index is published everyone in London will be able to use this alongside other evidence to target programmes and track the impact of the mission in supporting the building of strong communities. 

Over the past couple of months, we have spoken to Londoners during various workshops to identify what elements of "civic strength" are important to them. Before finding appropriate data and building out the index, we want to test these components with other Londoners - to hear your thoughts and get additional feedback! 

Find the survey and discussion thread on Talk London here. 

For more information..

Other programmes are also taking place as part of the Building Strong Communities mission and we will bring you another spotlight blog next month focusing on a couple of these. 

For now, you can read about other BSC programmes taking place, following the links below: 

• Civil Society Roots Incubator Programme
• Community Spaces at Risk programme
• Sport Unites

This is Yolande and Fiona with the first update from the Building Strong Communities mission team. We are the Interim Co-Chairs and our goal is that by 2025 all Londoners have access to a community hub ensuring they can volunteer, get support and build strong networks.

We are supported by a wider team of colleagues across the GLA, London Councils, London Plus, London Funders, Equality Infrastructure organisations, community and voluntary sectors (CVS) and volunteering bodies – we are excited to be able to engage you all on our space here on Talk London and hope we can work together to deliver this mission.  

Since August 2020, we’ve been engaging with Londoners to continue shaping the focus of our mission, some of this activity includes: 

• Community Conversations - in August 2020, we hosted community conversations inviting Londoners to feedback on the missions proposed by the London Recovery Board. Over 60 conversations took place involving 1000+ Londoners 
• Mission Design Engagement – in August 2020 we engaged with over 100 community organisations in shaping the proposed mission, this sat alongside insights from the community conversations to further develop the mission.   
• Building Strong Communities Workshop – in November 2020, we hosted a workshop involving over 200 community organisations in how we can collaborate on the mission.  
• Volunteering Summit – in January 2021, we hosted a summit with over 140 community organisations to discuss opportunities and challenges around volunteering.  

We are also planning in-depth engagement with Londoners later this year to develop a shared definition of a community hub, convene a space for partnership and collaboration and identify activities taking place across the city that contribute to the mission’s objective. 

In addition to the above, we have already commenced a range of activities to support the short and medium-term actions to deliver on the objective of the mission including funding, research and tailored support for community organisations:  

•  Civic Futures Programme – we launched a fellowship programme to bring leaders across London’s civil society and local government to facilitate collective learning and discovery focused on collaboration, exploration and inquiry and systems thinking to support London’s recovery.    
• Civil Society Roots Incubator Programme – we launched this programme to support community-led partnerships and collaborations that raise the voices of Londoners, increase feelings of belonging and increase access to support and services.   
•  London Community Response – we launched wave 5 of funding from the LCR partnership with a part focus on the Building Strong Communities mission.   
•  Community Spaces at Risk – we launched a fund to provide one-to-one specialist advice, direct support and small to medium grants to protect community-led spaces that are critical to the health, wellbeing and resilience of Londoners.   
• London Community Response Survey – we continue to run this dataset which includes ongoing questionnaires sent to a cohort of frontline Civil Society Organisation, beginning in April 2020. The results of which continue to inform the pan-London response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  
• Support for Mutual aid groups – we have commissioned two pieces of work to support Mutual Aid groups in London.   
• London Civic Strength Index – we have commissioned research to map the key domains of community strength and identify priorities for the recovery process.