We’ve just had some brilliant news about one of our longest-running campaigns: London Mayor Boris Johnson has finally agreed keep his election promise and open three new Rape Crisis centres in London.

In his 2008 election manifesto, Boris promised to provide funding for new and existing London centres. Rape Crisis centres provide vital support for victims of rape and sexual abuse, but as a result of severe financial difficulties many either face closure or have been forced to close. There are now only 39 centres across the UK, down from 80 ten years ago. Before this announcement, London had only one small centre catering to the city’s 3.9 million women.

When it looked like Boris wasn’t going to deliver on his promise, we joined together with the Boris Keep Your Promise Campaign to make sure he did. Thousands of us signed the petition demanding proper provision for victims of rape and sexual abuse in London. Thanks to our work, they will now be getting real support.

This is an incredible achievement, but the difficulties for London’s Rape Crisis centres are not over. Because the Mayor will not be providing as much money as he originally promised, the London centres will only be covered for the next two years. This means that it’s important that we keep working together to get them long-term, sustainable funding.

Matty Mitford, spokesperson for the Boris Keep Your Promise Campaign said: “I’m sure we join all other campaigns for women in welcoming the new centres, it is a leap forward for vulnerable women in London.”

Our campaign to get Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, to honour his election promise on Rape Crisis Centres is picking up pace. He promised to increase the number of Rape Crisis Centres in London from one to four but so far only one new centre has been confirmed.

Boris Keep Your Promise's campaign flyer for Conservative conference

38 Degrees is working with the Boris Keep Your Promise campaign to make sure Boris doesn’t get away with breaking his word. Recently, BKYP campaigners took their message to the Conservative party conference. Matty Mitford, who was part of the team in Manchester, said, “As it happens, we were extremely successful. We handed out our specially designed flyers, which included messages from 38 Degrees petition signers, all day for three straight days and received a surprisingly positive reaction from delegates.”

It wasn’t just David Cameron who received the attention of the Boris Keep Your Promise campaigners: Chris Grayling (shadow Home Secretary) has promised them a meeting soon (they’ve promised to keep us updated) and Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse (see him being targeted by the campaign here) received a copy of the flyer.

We’ve also been lucky to receive the support of several other organisations. London-based groups including Tender and the Greater London Domestic Violence Project have let people know about the campaign. Labour List featured an article on our progress so far and today, Mumsnet, Britain’s largest parenting site, let their users know about the campaign. Justine Roberts, co-founder of Mumsnet said, “All women who have been raped should be able to access the vital support provided by Rape Crisis Centres.  We’re calling on Boris to do the right thing, and honour his election commitment to fund four London centres.  Boris – keep your promise.”

We know that Boris is feeling the heat on this issue: the campaigners at the conference found many of the senior Tories already knew about Boris’ failure. But he still hasn’t delivered and, for survivors of sexual violence in London, the delay has already been far too long. Help us to keep up the pressure on Boris for taking action and spread the word to others.

We’re really pleased with the way that the campaign to get Boris to keep his promise on delivering rape crisis centres in London is going so far. We’ve been in contact with GLA members from all parties about our petition and Boris Keep Your Promise are making plans to guarantee we keep the heat on the Mayor. Over 2000 Londoners have now signed the petition and it keeps on growing every day.

Lots of you have helped to get more people involved by telling your friends. Thank you for doing that and please keep on spreading the word – together we can make sure this petition is too big for Boris to ignore.

We know that Boris has a big media team around him; after all, it’s partly his decision not to reduce it in size and commit the money to rape crisis provision instead (in line with his manifesto promise) that means we don’t have our four centres in the first place. If his advisers are any good at their jobs, they will be telling Boris that the rape crisis centre battle is one that he can’t win: noone can justify paying spin doctors big salaries over delivering vital support to people who have been raped and assaulted.

So, the most pressing question for 38 Degrees is: what shall we do next? How can we embarrass Boris enough to get him to find the money, and fast? Can you think of online actions we could design that would help to make our case? Or should we be asking for YouTube clips, or photos on Flickr? And are their offline opportunities to show him just how strongly we feel about his broken promise? Please post your ideas below: we’ll be in touch soon with more news on the campaign.