In the past year, Yorkshire has had the 2nd highest percentage of households experiencing fuel poverty in the UK.
Councillor Mary Harland said Leeds City Council are working to help reduce this number.
“We are doing what we can, as a council, to keep people warm and tackle the scourge of fuel poverty in Leeds. The Home Plus Service is providing energy efficiency and fuel bill advice to lower income vulnerable residents across Leeds, as well as referrals to grants for heating and energy efficiency improvements to 900 households in fuel poverty.”
With winter making it necessary to have some form of heat in the household, Leeds City Council are putting measures in place to help people in need.
“We’re taking a number of actions over winter to support residents affected by the crisis, including a comms campaign for winter wellbeing guidance and general cost of living advice, an updated managing your money booklet from the Money Information Centre, and maintaining our Local Welfare Support Scheme to support households in crisis with food support, furniture and white goods.”
All Hallows church are offering ‘pay-as-you-feel’ meals and food shops in their cafe, Rainbow Junktion, to help people who are struggling with the cost of living whilst providing somewhere for them to keep warm.
Rainbow Junktion manager, Nic Harte, says that the cafe is vital for many people around the Leeds area.
“First and foremost, eating is a basic human need not even a basic human right, we all have to eat.”
Harte says the government’s greed is driving more and more people to seek help.
“Its putting people who already struggle with the cost of food, into food poverty.”
Rainbow Junktion’s footfall has doubled over the last year, following the rise of the cost of living.
“Last year we thought we’d peaked at around 100 people, but now we’re regularly seeing more than 200 people each time and it never falls below 200 now, so that equates to around 600 people we’re feeding every week.”
Increased demand means that Harte and her team are fighting to keep providing meals for people in need.
“There’s a lot of pressure, because we only have a limited number of funds.”
“We work hard to intercept food that would’ve otherwise gone to the bins that is perfectly fine and edible – that’s food that we can create hot meals with or hand out to people if its deemed suitable.”
“We are haemorrhaging money and we can’t keep it up forever.”
Leeds City Council offer some help to the cafe but Harte says they still need more.
“We have good links with the council and there is some support but it isn’t always guaranteed or long term.”
“We don’t know what the financial situation is for the next few months or going forward.”
The work of Rainbow Junktion and other ‘pay-as-you-feel’ venues around Leeds is pivotal to the effort towards fighting the rising cost of living and aiding those in need.
