Churches are invited to mark Homelessness Sunday on 4 October 2026. The day is an opportunity for us to raise awareness of homelessness, poverty and housing insecurity, to reflect on how we, as worshipping communities in the Diocese of Leicester, can support people experiencing homelessness and to take practical action through volunteering, hosting, fundraising and community projects.
Clergy and lay leaders recently gathered for a Bishop’s Study Day on the theme of Christians and Politics, to learn more about how our faith inspires our engagement with social and political issues.
Bishop Martyn and his Social Policy Advisor, Florence Gildea, have launched a blog designed to help Christian leaders participate in public debates about contested questions. The aim behind “Faith in the Public Square” is to bring evidence from the social sciences together with theology to help readers think through areas of our common life which are the subject of heated debate.
Exaireo Trust, a Christian social housing charity in Loughborough, celebrated the launch of its new initiative - Enterprise Partnerships in Communities (EPiC) - earlier this month. The volunteer-led vision of EPiC is to offer meaningful employment to people who face barriers to work, while blessing the local community through practical services such as car washing, gardening, and painting and decorating.
Around 120 people from organisations across the city gathered at Leicester Cathedral to mark one year since the launch of the Intercultural City project, to hear about the successes so far, and to make pledges for the future.
The Promoting Unity in our Nation group, chaired by Bishop Martyn, want to hear from church leaders in the Diocese of Leicester about whether political and social polarisation is having an effect in your communities and, if so, what resources you would find useful.
The Bill to remove the two-child limit in Universal Credit was debated in the House of Lords today (12 March 2026). The Rt Revd Martyn Snow, Lord Bishop of Leicester, addressed the House with a speech highlighting how the limit deepens both material poverty and the sense of shame experienced by families, reinforcing harmful assumptions about their responsibility and worth. He called for cross‑party collaboration on how to end the policy and address the wider structural and emotional impacts of poverty on people’s lives.
Bishop Martyn spoke to BBC East Midlands reporter, Jeremy Ball, about building bridges between cultures at Christmas.
Writing for the Church Times this week, Bishop Martyn makes the case that Christian views on specific welfare policies vary, but a fairer society benefits everyone.
Bishop Martyn made the following statement on social media, in response to today's publication of the government's Child Poverty Strategy (5 December 2025).