The Tackling Poverty Together Group has disbanded after 12 years of success

Following the Local Government Reorganisation in Bedfordshire it was agreed to disband the countywide TPT Group. From April 2010 separate arrangements were made to discuss poverty related issues in Bedford Borough and Central Bedfordshire.

Recent developments locally include:

• In Bedford Borough a Poverty Task Force has been formed to replace the TPT Group.
• In Central Bedfordshire tackling inequalities is a key priority in its draft Sustainable Community Strategy. An important aim in the Strategy is to “Reduce the number of people living in poverty”.
• Poverty News - continues to be issued (see below)
• TPT Website - at present this is still being updated but the long-term future of the website has yet to be decided.
• Networking and information exchange - it is hoped a countywide exchange of  information will be maintained through Poverty News and other networking events.

A Statement of Intent developed by the group and signed up to by a significant number of organisations in Bedfordshire is as follows:

'We acknowledge that poverty is a reality in Bedfordshire, and affects us all. We are committed to organising our services and developing partnerships with others, to take positive action to tackle poverty together in Bedfordshire.'  

TPT Summary of Activities

• 34 TPT Group meetings (since March 2001)
• 33 editions of Poverty News (since January 2002)
• TPT Website (since December 2002)
• 4 conferences
  • 1997 - Poverty in Bedfordshire
  • 2001 - The way ahead
  • 2003 - Building strategic and practical links
  • 2005 - The cost of debt
• 2 Seminars
  • 2007 - Child poverty in Bedfordshire
  • 2008 - Migrant workers
• Research
  • 2000 - Social inclusion strategies
  • 2005 - Benefits advice in Bedfordshire
  • 2007 - Credit union for Mid Bedfordshire

The TPT Group was originally formed in 1998 following Bedfordshire’s first anti-poverty conference in November 1997. Since then the Group has acted as an information exchange between key agencies in the County and has been involved in a number of initiatives to raise the profile of and have a direct influence on local poverty issues.

Latest Poverty News

• Poverty News (PDF Document)

Research

The Tackling Poverty Together Group undertakes research into and around financial exclusion in Bedfordshire. Since financial exclusion has a wide range of influencing factors, TPT have broken down its research into a number of projects

Details of the projects and a summary reports can be found below.

• Benefits Advice in Bedfordshire – Research into the take-up of Benefits & the provision of Benefits Advice in Bedfordshire (PDF File) - 2005
• A Credit Union for Mid Bedfordshire Report - Research and feasibility study into the development of a credit union in Mid Bedfordshire (PDF) - 2007 (see seperate page about Bedford Credit Union)
• Child Poverty Action Seminar Report (PDF File) - 2008
• Migrant Workers Seminar Report (PDF File) - 2008

The above mentioned documents have been produced in an Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) Documents (This will require you to have free Acrobat software on your computer.  If you do not have the necessary software, please click here to go to the Adobe website where you can download it). To download the documents – simply hold your cursor over the name of the relevant document (above), click the right button on your mouse and then choose ‘save target as’, and choose where you want to save the file on your hard drive (usually 'My Documents').