The care home boss
The faint worry lines under Oona Goldsworthy’s eyes tell their own story. It has been a gruelling few weeks at the helm of Brunelcare, a charity that provides sheltered housing to 1,400 people and runs seven care homes in Bristol and Somerset.
“We were set up during the blitz when older people were being bombed out of their homes in Bristol. Our mantra then was to keep them warm, keep them fed, and keep them alive – and we haven’t really needed to worry about that in the decades since,” the chief excutive says at the charity’s head office in the city. “Now we’re in a situation where we need to make sure people are kept warm and we need to make sure people are fed.”
Last week Goldsworthy was forced to sign a new energy contract worth £7.7m because prices were rising by £100,000 a day. From October it will be paying more than five times what it used to pay for gas and electricity, which was about £1.5m a year. “We’re in an absolutely impossible situation. I’ve had one of the worst weeks ever and I’ve been through Covid so I know what hard times are like,” she says, shaking her head gently. “We are being abandoned again.”
Goldsworthy worries about the impact this huge financial burden will have on residents of the sheltered homes. Staff are desperately seeking to cut energy usage by 20% and ensure residents are claiming their full benefit entitlement, but she dreads the winter. “We are planning for an emergency,” she says. “Brunelcare alone does not have the means to help everyone through this cost of living crisis.”
Service charges paid by sheltered housing residents are likely to more than quadruple. “There is currently no protection for some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in this country because they do not buy their own gas and electricity. They have been forgotten about,” says Goldsworthy. “We are really worried about how they will cope this winter – many could be forced to choose between heating and eating. It is horrific.”
The government’s energy price cap and £400 bill rebate only apply only to domestic customers who buy their own electricity and gas. They do not help people living in sheltered housing or care homes, where the energy to heat and power their homes is purchased on the wholesale market by a charity or private provider. The vast majority of Brunelcare’s residents are on low incomes, with 70% entitled to benefits including universal credit and pension credit. However, these benefits do not cover increased energy costs
The lack of government help could have serious consequences. “Like many other charities, we can’t just absorb these kinds of price increases,” says Goldsworthy.
“We’ll have to make cuts and put up our charges [for sheltered housing] to cover this. Unless the government steps in, it will put into jeopardy our ability to continue to support our residents in the way we always have.”
Tom Wall
The museum bosses
Diana Leitch, chair of the trustees of the Catalyst Science Discovery Centre and Museum in Widnes, Cheshire, said the museum was stunned when its quoted gas bill for the year rose by 460%. She said the museum would be forced to look at cutbacks, but would try to avoid reducing opening hours.
The museum’s annual gas bill to the end of September 2022 was £9,700, but on 5 August it was quoted £48,582 for a renewed annual contract from 1 October.
Leitch said: “We were so stunned by this we started to look around to find if we could find something better. We found other suppliers were doing what is called closing their books and were not making offers. In the interim, the cost to renew our contract had risen to £54,362.”
It meant the cost of renewing the annual gas contract had been rising by nearly £580 a day. The museum sought the help of a broker in finding a new contract and signed a new contract on Thursday for £44,000.
Leitch said: “You can see the enormity of what is going on. And it’s happening everywhere. We don’t wish to cut back on what we are providing.
“Widnes is a deprived area and there are three food banks within half a mile of where we are. These are the people who making the decision on whether they eat or have heat. People will be coming into museums to keep warm.”
Lee Juby, the museum’s chief executive, said: “Energy bills are a large proportion of our cost, but we have enough reserves to get through this.
“There will be undoubtedly some organisations that don’t survive.”
Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Rebecca Brahde
The headteacher
Instead of recovering from a “hellish few years” running 18 schools during a pandemic, Dan Morrow, CEO of the Dartmoor Multi Academy Trust, spent his holiday last week writing different versions of budget cuts, including job losses, to present to his board.
“I can’t sleep,” he said. “I am trying to find a solution that might work. It isn’t just elusive, I fear it doesn’t exist.”
At the end of last term Morrow knew things were bad. He had to find an eye-watering £800,000 to cover the increase in energy bills. He had cancelled job ads to recruit important support staff in areas including attendance and family liaison as well as teaching assistants. Then it got worse. The trust had budgeted what had been suggested for teachers’ pay, but at the start of the holidays the government announced an increased pay rise of 5%, which was followed by a separate rise for local council support staff, with no extra cash to pay for them. That meant finding an extra £900,000.
Morrow is clear that he “absolutely supports” these pay increases. “They are in fact real terms pay cuts as they are significantly below inflation. But they are significantly above funding,” he said.
His budget plans include redundancies, he said, “but this will be our absolute last option”. Nonetheless, he will have to freeze all recruitment, which equates to a 5% cut in staff, or 45 jobs. He is also looking, with regret, at cutting uniform and food grants for struggling families, school trips, sports competitions and new books.
He fears the poorest children, many of whom are already significantly behind because of Covid, will be hit hardest. “They are labelled disadvantaged but are under-served by a system that appears to want to keep them in their ‘place’,” he said. “It means the idea that education is part of the levelling up agenda isn’t just risible, it is patently untrue.”
Anna Fazackerley