Last month Barking and Dagenham Council hosted the first ever East BCU Serious Violence Summit. The East BCU is the tri-borough command unit which covers Barking and Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge. The event was launched in response to the concerning rise in violent crime across the tri-borough area over the last 12 months.

Over 200 people attended the event from across boroughs including MPs, councillors, voluntary organisations, social workers, charities, and people from the education sector.

Jon Cruddas MP for Dagenham and Rainham is encouraging local charities and good causes across the constituency to apply for over £3million of funding that has been raised by the players of People’s Postcode Lottery.

Applications are open from 6 February until 20 February, where a whole host of good causes from social enterprises to voluntary groups and registered charities are eligible to apply for grants of between £500 and £20,000.

Jon Cruddas MP was recently contacted by the People’s Health Trust delivering the news that £18,595 in grant funding has been awarded to Young Stars Football First and their ‘Beam Park Walking Football’ project. The project engages with older people living in the Beam Park area of Dagenham and gets them involved in slow paced recreational exercise and social activities.

Jon Cruddas MP pledges to help end misery of cold homes in London.  The most recent Excess Winter Death figures have just been released and show that 3,094 in London died needlessly of the cold last winter, an increase of 20.3% on last year. The WASH campaign aims to highlight the desperate and unsafe coping strategies being adopted across the UK due to the misery of living in fuel poverty. The charity says it rejects the idea this should be normal in a country as wealthy as the UK and much more can be done to end fuel poverty and ‘preventable’ excess winter deaths and ill health.