Apologies if you felt somewhat bombarded by my repeated calls urging you to respond to the Reforming Financial Markets White Paper and add your voice to the call for real banking reform. It's been a delight to see how many organisations and individuals took the time to respond, particularly those of you who wouldn't ordinarily have done so. Around 50 people either shared a copy of their response or contacted me to say they would be responding and many more circulated information to their networks encouraging them to respond. Over 30 organisations have now signed up to our campaign - welcome to our latest supporters, Re:generate, Action for Market Towns, Muslim Council of Britain and Equanomics. And 300 people have signed our petition calling for banking reform. A positive start - but still modest progress given the scale of our ambition. Please add your names and encourage others to do the same!

The combination of a strong response from civil society groups to the White Paper, growing media interest - special mentions for the great feature in this month's New Start magazine and the Observer's Business section article - and some good old fashioned lobbying seem to be hitting their mark. In what passes for action at the Treasury, we've been picking up signs that officials are dusting off their files on the Community Reinvestment Act and looking again at the case for UK legislation. Treasury Minister, Liam Byrne, told a Labour Party conference fringe event that they were ‘looking at it [a CRA] earnestly' and when pressed by the DTA's Steve Wyler admitted ‘'I wouldn't be looking at CRA if I didn't think it was possible'. Certainly progress, but legislation is still a long long way off.

So, it's great to be part of an emerging coalition of organisations from across the voluntary and community sector, social enterprise and community finance organisations, who are all committed to campaign for banking reform. From now until the general election we will need to focus single-mindedly on gaining commitments to our proposals from the political Parties and making people aware that there's a way to channel anger and frustration over the banks into positive solution. Onwards and upwards!