Year: 2023

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SMK Awards: David & Goliath winner 2023

JRRT is proud to sponsor the David & Goliath Award at the SMK Awards, which celebrates individuals or small campaign groups that take on much bigger organisations and challenge vested power.

Our Award sponsorship is made in memory of former Director, Lord David Shutt.

And the 2023 winner has now been announced!

 

Congratulations to The Community Energy Revolution!

  • You want to buy locally baked bread? You can.
  • You want to buy locally brewed beer? You can.
  • You want to buy locally generated renewable energy? You can’t.

Power for People are co-ordinating grassroots advocacy across the UK for the Local Electricity Bill.

The Bill, if enacted, would empower community energy schemes to sell their clean energy back to their community. Their campaign has gathered cross-party support from more than 300 MPs.

In accepting the award, Steve Shaw and Corinna Miller from Power for People said:

“The Community Energy Revolution campaign would not have the impressive support it currently has in Parliament without the tireless advocacy of people in communities across the country. We have come a long way but are still working hard to see this change enacted – it is vital both for our communities and for the planet.”

Find out more about Power for People and join their Community Energy Revolution on their website.

 

And visit www.smk.org.uk/awards for lots more from the 2023 Awards!

 

Photo (top) courtesy of:
Hackney Banister House
 A community energy group located in London

 

 

You can watch the presentation of the 2023 David & Goliath Award below:

 

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Transparency, Diversity and Accountability – The Foundation Practice Rating 2023

JRRT is one of 13 funders supporting the Foundation Practice Rating, an initiative led by Friends Provident Foundation to improve practices of Trusts and Foundations on transparency, accountability and diversity.  Each year 100 of the UK’s biggest foundations are assessed, including the funders associated with the initiative.

 

Our results

In year 2, JRRT’s overall rating remains unchanged at B.  Our rating for diversity is C, accountability B (up from C the year before) and transparency A.  Within these we have made improvements on accountability and diversity.

 

DiversityAccountabilityTransparencyOverall rating
Year 2CBAB
Year 1CCAB

 

The limited improvements reflect work by the staff team.  We aim to make further changes this year, including three commitments sparked by the campaign to prompt participating Trusts to make pledges to improve.

 

Our pledges

This year, we plan to:

 

Year 2 report launched

The Foundation Practice Rating launched the full report into the Year 2 findings across the 100 sampled organisations in March 2023.

You can download the report from their website.

 

And watch the report launch event below:

 

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SMK Awards 2023: Shortlists announced!

Each year, the Shelia McKechnie Foundation celebrates the best campaigns and campaigners with their SMK National Campaigner Awards. Their aim is to recognise and honour those who have made change happen – most effectively, creatively and courageously. And the shortlists have just been announced!

 

JRRT is proud to sponsor the David & Goliath category at the SMK Awards. It celebrates individuals or small campaign groups that take on much bigger organisations and challenge vested power. Our sponsorship is made in memory of our friend and former Director, Lord David Shutt.

 

Shortlisted campaigns

The campaigns nominated in the 2023 David & Goliath category are:

 

Forgotten Fish Animal Equality’s ‘Forgotten Fish’ campaign highlights the overwhelming scientific consensus that fish can feel pain and suffer, just like all animals, and therefore should receive adequate protections in law.

 

The Community Energy Revolution Their campaign aims to unblock the remarkable potential for community energy schemes to flourish across the UK, creating new jobs, lowering energy bills, and generating money for community benefit.

 

Windrush Against Sewage Pollution A grassroots group of activists based near the River Windrush in Oxfordshire, WASP hit the news in June 2022, when their ground-breaking investigative work was used by environmental non-profit Wild Justice to take the water regulator Ofwat to court over its alleged failure to stop water companies discharging raw sewage into rivers.

 

 

 

Winners of the David & Goliath Award – and all the other SMK Awards – will be announced at a ceremony in London on 24 May 2023.

Check out the shortlists for all of the categories in the Awards, on the SMK website.

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The UK’s Electoral Data Deficit: A vision for digital modernisation

Professor Toby S. James & Professor Paul Bernal, January 2023

“the UK’s electoral machinery was established in Victorian times, and large parts of the data architecture in the electoral world remains Victorian.”

This report outlines the electoral data democratic deficit in the UK and its consequences for democracy, and makes the case for urgently establishing a comprehensive architecture and approach to electoral data to enable a fairer and more inclusive democracy.

The report finds considerable problems with the current elections data infrastructure and approach. There are significant data blackholes – electoral data which is unavailable, but which would be in the public interest to have collected and published. Data is often collated in unworkable formats which restricts usability, severely limiting the ability to develop interventions to improve voter registration and turnout. There is considerable inequality in who has access to data, meaning those who are seeking to support greater equality of participation are heavily restricted or burdened in attempting to learn what works. There are also monitoring gaps in how key electoral data is used, including individual level data on whether people have voted at an election and their history of voting at previous elections. This is often being used without citizens’ knowledge of who and for what purpose the data is being accessed. There is also substantial untapped potential where electoral data could be used to support citizens to be better informed, for electoral institutions to be much more transparent, and for a wide range of actors (including regulators, media, and civil society) to leverage data to promote participation in elections.

This report provides a short- and longer-term plan for modernising the electoral data architecture and approach to ensure it is fit for purpose for the 21st century

Download the full report here