Launching the Evaluation of the Faith Covenant – Faith in Partnership Week 2025
8th – 12th September 2025
On day two of Faith in Partnership Week 2025, FaithAction’s intern Suranne, who has been helping us organise the week, reports back from yesterday’s exciting event, which saw the FaithAction team and the APPG on Faith and Society launch a fantastic piece of work evaluating the Faith Covenant.
Marking the beginning of the fourth annual #FaithinPartnership Week, on the afternoon of Monday 8th September, we celebrated our Faith Covenant research launch.
Dr Daniel Range offered an introduction to the evaluation—recognising the importance of the faith sector in acting as ‘glue’ binding society together, the research seeks to address both best practice and eradicating blockages, helping to shape future iterations of the Faith Covenant.
Reflecting on the perceived apprehension between faith groups and statutory bodies, Zöe Franklin MP, Chair of the APPG on Faith and Society and Rt Hon Sir Stephen Timms MP, Founding Chair of the APPG on Faith and Society, celebrated the Faith Covenant as a means to guide and engage Faith Communities and their local authority partners to achieve positive social change in the communities that they represent.
Highlighting this, questions relating to the Faith Covenant’s implementation were directed to our panel of Faith Covenant representatives:
Tim Jones highlighted the Covenant’s progression in Brighton and Hove, with their 2024 re-signing serving a ‘maturing phase’ for further development of intra-faith relational links between different faith communities.
Mustafa Field emphasised the importance of engaging all communities in Brent, suggesting that such leverage is necessary to ensure that council policy can reach everybody.
Steve Botham reflected on the collaborative questions asked during the elementary stages of the Faith Covenant in the West Midlands, positing the question: “what makes a neighbourhood flourish?”
Aman Jaswal believes that during the COVID-19 pandemic, faith-based organisations’ role in uniting the community, prompted the Brent local authority to realise their significance, where faith-based organisations are seen as valuable partners but also serve as critical friends.
Interested in contributing to the Faith Covenant evaluation?
8th – 12th September 2025
Faith in Partnership Week celebrates cross-sector work taking place in the UK at a local and national level and encourages its expansion.
