Hazel Blears' speech (at the Edith Khan lecture) included direct references to our community reinvestment ideas - raising the possibility of CRA-type legislation in the UK and the idea of a ‘People's Bank'. We've been discussing the ideas for some time with her advisors and so it was heartening to hear her quoting directly from our paper on community reinvestment. Although Hazel has now resigned as Communities Secretary, the train has been set in motion for CLG officials to begin developing this work and a meeting has been scheduled for the middle of June for stakeholders to discuss these issues with civil servants.

Also, in the same week as Hazel Blears' speech, I was invited to give a presentation to the Regeneration All Party Parliamentary Group, where I spoke publicly for the first time about our rationale and ideas for community reinvestment. It seemed to go fairly well and the MPs and Peers present appeared interested (as far as one can tell!). I've since had a call from one MPs office to ask how they might be able to support the proposals, which is encouraging.

It was a very busy week as a thinkpiece for Social Enterprise magazine followed and, with our ideas now in the public domain, our community reinvestment campaign was effectively launched - without our quite realising it!