Recently LVSC has responded to the following consultations:

London Councils Grants Scheme 2013-15

March 2012

LVSC has responded to London Councils' consultation on the principles and priorities for its future grants scheme in 2013-15. The response contains a lot of evidence of the benefits and impacts of voluntary and community sector support services.

LVSC response to London Councils Grants Scheme 2013-15

Mayor's draft Housing Strategy for London

March 2012

LVSC worked with a number of other regional and national organisations to respond to the Mayor's draft Housing Strategy. These organisations came together in this way to express our concern about the housing crisis in London, which has resulted in a lack of affordable homes in the capital and increasing risks of homelessness, overcrowding and social isolation amongst Londoners."

 VCS response to consultation on the draft revised London Housing Strategy

London Assembly investigation into employment and skills opportunities and at the Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012

February 2012

LVSC raised concerns about the implementation of the Government's Work Programme in London on the most disadvantaged long-term unemployed and the specialist voluntary and community sector groups that support them.

You can read our briefing on our Fair Chance to Work campaign pages or watch the video of the evidence session on the London Assembly's website (Economy, Culture and Sport Committee meeting 7th February 2012).

Caring for our future: consultation on the future of social care

December 2011

LVSC has submitted its response to The 'Caring for our Future - shared ambitions for care and support' engagement exercise. This is the Government's next step in the reform of social care before the publication of the Care and Support White Paper in spring 2012.

We raised concerns about:

• the integration of health and social care with wider preventative services;
• the impacts of present public sector funding cuts on social care provision by the voluntary and community sector in London; and
• the disproportionate costs of adult social care in London.

LVSC's response to 'Caring for Our Future'

Response to the second NHS Future Forum consultation

November 2011

LVSC has submitted its response to the second NHS Future Forum consultation which looked in more detail at the future of:

• education & training;
• information provision;
• integration of health and care services; and
• public health.

The response was developed from discussions at an October roundtable event hosted by LVSC. This introduced members of London's voluntary and community sector to NHS Future Forum member, Sol Mead, who led the debate.

LVSC's response to the second NHS Future Forum consultation

Open Public Services White Paper

September 2011

LVSC's response to the Open Public Services White Paper

This highlighted our concerns about the lack of acknowledgement of the voluntary and community sector (VCS)'s role in wider support for public services, the lack of detail about how barriers to VCS involvement in public service delivery are to be addressed and the danger that the needs of the most disadvantaged Londoners have not been sufficently considered.

NHS Listening Exercise

May 2011

LVSC's response to the NHS Listening Exercise

 expressed concerns about:

• the proposed speed of implementation of untested reforms;
• integration of, and collaboration between, services being reduced if competition is prioritised; and
• the current proposals favouring service provision by large private sector providers who will take profits out of the public purse.

Feedback to our consultation response

Paul Burstow, Minister for Care Services, has written a letter to the Department of Health Strategic Partners,who include LVSC as part of the Regional Voices Partnership thanking us for our work feeding into the Listening Exercise.  He says that our input particularly contributed to  some key changes including:

• plans to fundamentally strengthen public and patient involvement;
• improving the transparency and accountability of the new decision makers; and
• the move towards working more collaboratively throughout the system.

Child Poverty Strategy consultation

April 2011

LVSC raised the following issues in their response:

• the government needs to act immediately to help the 630,000 London children currently iving in poverty, for whom future reforms will be of little benefit.
• current policy to reduce  housing benefit will adversely affect children in over 80,000 London homes. Many will also be affected by cuts to out-of-work benefits.
• Household income has an enormous influence on life chances. LVSC therefore believes that in any move to shift the remit of the Child Poverty Commission (and the language of policy making) to a broader consideration of 'life chances', current measures of child poverty based on household income must not be lost.
• London has higher levels of child poverty than anywhere else in the UK. In fact, 22% of all UK children living in poverty are in London. The strategy must therefore do more to recognise the extraordinary circumstances in London, which include: high living costs; high unemployment; shortage of part time work; and large numbers of disadvantaged communities.