Martin Jones
SPRING has sprung and there is a palpable sense that, after the past two years, things really are getting better.
That said, the reality is that for a great number of people, life is getting increasingly hard.
Just last month, a report coauthored by Professor David Etherington, Dr Luke Telford and myself from Staffordshire University, alongside Simon Harris and Sam Hubbard from Citizens Advice Staffordshire North and Stoke-on-trent warned of a ‘pending poverty catastrophe’ in Stoke-on-trent unless urgent action is taken.
The cost-of-living crisis continues to build with increases in energy prices, private house rental prices, food and transport costs and an increase in National Insurance from this month.
This combines to form the perfect storm.locally, the total number of families receiving food aid from the Alice Charity – Staffordshire University’s corporate charity – between January 2021 to January 2022 amounted to 1,727.
The total number of families helped in 2018 and 2019 was 756, indicating a startling rise in demand for food aid.
This picture of deprivation was partly driven by the recent removal of the £20 uplift in Universal Credit, which hit areas like North Staffordshire hard.
Between September 2021 and January 2022, Citizens Advice Staffordshire North and Stoke-ontrent received more than 11,500 inquires about Universal Credit, debt and other benefits and tax credits, representing 71 per cent of total inquiries.
Levelling up needs to be about more than bricks and mortar.
Unless the Government addresses head-on the escalating cost-of-living crisis then, despite all other best intentions, more people in our city will struggle with the basics of day-to-day life.
The Office for National Statistics surveyed 13,000 adults between November 2021 to March 2022 and found that as many as 83 per cent saw an increase in their cost of living in March, up from 62 per cent in November.
With utility bills on the increase and the weekly food shop costing more than before, the ONS reported that 34 per cent of respondents were using less gas and electricity at home. Meanwhile, 31 per cent were spending less on food.
In the poverty report mentioned earlier, we impressed the need to take urgent action to avoid a poverty catastrophe. We pointed to recommendations we had made in an earlier report that included:
■ A job retention intervention is required urgently to replace furlough schemes including job rotation, which involves integrating skills and employment training to address skills shortages. This would be along the lines of job rotation interventions successfully developed and deployed in other countries such as Denmark, Sweden, and Germany;
■ Campaigns, involving local advice agencies, to ensure people know what benefits they are entitled to claim;
■ Promotion of the living wage and sustainable employment in relation to inward investment policies;
■ Affordable, flexible childcare is essential for parents to access work;
■ As well as skills development, vast improvements are required to employment support services for disabled people to reduce the disability employment gap.
In short, something must be done and quickly. If not, then our promising spring and summer could very well transition to a long and cold winter of discontent.