A week after a shooting outside of the Queen’s Crescent Community Association (QCCA), leader of the opposition and local MP Sir Keir Starmer helped staff there hand out Iftar meals on Monday night.

Sir Keir joined Cllr Georgia Gould (Lab, Kentish Town) at the nightly event in Gospel Oak which sees the Ashdown Crescent-based QCCA provide food to Muslim and non-Muslim members of the community during Ramadan.

The new Labour leader helped to give out 100 hot meals – which are provided to the centre by the Sizzling Bombay and Milkman restaurants in Euston.

This is part of QCCA’s ‘Fight C19’ programme to support the community.

Sir Keir said: “QCCA is always at the heart of this community providing support of every conceivable kind. When you have a crisis like this, it’s QCCA that steps up.

“I hope that by being here, we’re not only distributing food, we’re demonstrating our support for the community in response to yet another awful incident. The number of people coming here shows you how much need there is.”

Cllr Gould added: “It’s vital to be here a week after the shooting. Sadly Queen’s Crescent’s has seen too many incidents like last week’s, which was particularly scary because we weren’t expecting to see it during lockdown. But people are resilient and this is a community that hasn’t given up hope.”

Local man Samir came to collect food with his daughter. He said: “We’re finding it harder than usual because of lockdown with the children so it’s good to be able to come here to the centre for this. “It’s the second time I’ve taken the Iftar and the food is good. Usually I come to the centre if I need help with writing support letters.”

QCCA’s Iftar is being offered to everyone in the community to collect and take home.

To support QCCA’s Fight C19 effort, visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/iftar-for-all-at-qcca/