2024 Cooperative Case Studies
- May 2024
- Lead Member Brent Council
- Categories Poverty
A Poverty Commission was created to find out why so many of Brent’s residents are poor and what can be done about it.
In recent years poverty has significantly increased as an outer London problem, a situation made much worse by Covid-19. The Council decided it needed a thorough understanding of poverty in the borough. The Commission sought to answer why so many Brent residents are poor, what it means to live in poverty and what works to address the issue – and how to prevent it from arising. Although there was a wealth of knowledge within the Council, it wanted to draw on wider expertise and experience of what works elsewhere. And the Council wanted to hear things people might not like to tell it. To meet these challenges, it commissioned the independent Brent Poverty Commission in January 2020. Chaired by the former Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Lord Richard Best, the Commission included experts and frontline practitioners across London and nationally.
