When Councils and other public sector agencies decide to set up a contract, they can publish the information in a range of settings. Early today an enquiry emerged in an email setting I am connected to that came from the North of Tyne Combined Authority. The request for help is to set up the first post COVID and first Combined Authority Poverty Truth Commission which is due to start towards the end of July this year and it is expected to run till the 9th May 2023. The focus is on a category defined as “80000000 – Management and Business Professionals and Administrative Services” and the NTCA is offering a sum of approximately £80,000 to achieve this truth commission. I am very impressed to see this. According to other websites the first UK based Poverty Truth Commission took place in Glasgow through the Faith in Community Scotland agency starting in 2005 and there have been others since then elsewhere. Clearly once the PTC results come through in two years time let us hope that the NTCA will work hard to reduce the poverty causes and improves the conditions for those people being impacted by poverty. Many of us are very aware of the impact of poverty in the North East of England and in a number of locations in Scotland but in reality there are also poverty cases across the nation. Indeed here in the South East there are also very clear cases of poverty. Although we don’t have a Combined Authority in a formal sense here in Sussex, perhaps we could find a way to persuade our various authorities to enable some of our local community groups to do something similar. Indeed given that we have a Sussex Day in five weeks time, perhaps we could call on the Councils to work together on a theme like this. In the meantime the following information which is very brief explains about the contract for NTCA.

NTCA are seeking an organisation to deliver the North of Tyne Poverty Truth Commission. Based on a nationally-recognised model of practice, our PTC will be the first to run post-COVID and across a Combined Authority area.

And the person to contact is Judith Robson who is part of North Tyneside Council

Quadrant, Cobalt Business Park
North Tyneside
Tyne and Wear
NE27 0BY
United Kingdom

judith.robson@northtyneside.gov.uk 0191 6435660