Invitation to tender: London Voices - the journey to full participation

Our Citizenship & Integration Initiative is opening this invitation to tender looking for a suitably experienced consultant, or a partnership between a consultant and a leading civil society organisation, to undertake comprehensive research into the mechanisms that can facilitate equal, inclusive, representative civic and democratic participation. This is designed to ensure Londoners trust and take part in social action and decisions impacting them, their families, their communities and their great city.

The Survey of Londoners has shown that people are more likely to feel happy and like they belong in a city which they have helped to shape and support. However, to participate, Londoners need access to relevant rights, opportunities and activities to do this effectively. Civil society, regional and local authorities, and funders play an important role in ensuring Londoners actively participate in their communities and their city, in decisions that affect them and have an increased feeling of trust, control and power.

One way of ensuring Londoners play an active role in shaping their city is understanding the state of London’s social contract and democracy, by working with partners to ensure participation is embedded into all streams of medium-term and long-term recovery, particularly those which focus on: building and supporting resilience; bringing Londoners together; tackling exacerbated inequalities and social isolation; and supporting London’s civil society.

But in order to ensure the emerging post-Brexit and post-COVID–19 social contract has civic and democratic participation at its heart, we need to:

• Fill gaps in research;
• Be led by community voices and lived experiences;
• Map best practice; and
• Inspire innovation and collaboration.

Full details on the aim of the London Voices research, the work we seek to commission, the skills and experience expected from the commission partner(s), and the procedure to tender for this work are included in the document below:

Please download the full invitation to tender above and send us applications containing:

• answers to the three evaluation criteria in Annex A, including links to examples of your recent work, a brief risk register and a brief literature review (the maximum length of this should be 10 single–sided A4 pages)
• a detailed budget proposal
• relevant CV(s) (the maximum length of each should be one A4 page each)
• contact details of two referees

Please submit your application to tenders@trustforlondon.org.uk by 5pm, 1 April 2021.

If you have any questions about this invitation to tender, please contact Geraldine Blake, CII Co- ordinator for Trust for London.

The Citizenship & Integration Initiative (CII) is a pooled fund held by Trust for London that brings together funding from independent foundations to support Londoners of all backgrounds to have meaningful opportunities to participate in the life of the city and the decisions that affect them. It works closely with the Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority (GLA) to achieve these goals by funding the secondment of civil society experts into the GLA’s Social Integration team and by supporting community-led projects that further the initiative’s goals.

Funding for this tender has been provided by Trust for London and the UK Democracy Fund, set up by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.