Poor face eat or heat dilemma
Charity calls for intervention as half those using foodbanks also go without gas and electricity
A Stirling charity is working with hundreds of residents who cannot afford to heat their homes.
Half of those in need of foodbank referrals in Stirling went without electricity or gas in the previous six months, new research published by Stirling District Citizens Advice Bureau has shown.
A report published last week has drawn focus to the root causes of food and fuel poverty, and the role that financial illiteracy has had on these issues. The charity is calling for an increase in crisis intervention as it is finding that simply signposting clients to support is not proving to be enough.
Stirling CAB bureau manager Craig Anderson said that thousands of people in the area are hit by fuel poverty. He said: “Unfortunately in recent years, foodbanks have become an important part of local communities. In the past 18 months we at the Stirling Bureau have referred over 1000 clients to the foodbank. Coupled with this, there are roughly 13,000 households in the Stirling area defined as in fuel poverty.
“Our research has discovered that often these two strands of poverty overlap with 50 per cent of foodbank referrals having to go without electricity or gas during the previous six months. Further to this, two-thirds experienced this on more than one occasion and 47 per cent had been cut off for more than a day.”
The report, entitled Heat and Eat, is a part of the Stirling CAB’s effort to identify and break the cycle of dependency surrounding foodbanks and address fuel poverty in not only the Stirling area, but also across Scotland and the UK as a whole. Already with the limited introduction of a new model of crisis intervention, the CAB is seeing an uplift of engagement in postreferral financial advice from 5 per cent to 80 per cent.
“What we have discovered is that those in most need are usually ending up paying for energy in the most expensive of ways,” said Craig. “For example, 83 per cent of clients stated that they used prepayment meters, which have been shown to cost on average £300 more per year than if they were paying by direct debit or standing orders.
“Around 63 per cent of clients don’t use direct debits or standing orders for any type of bill and a fifth did not have a bank account.
“The work we have carried out has shown that simply signposting clients to the relevant services does not seem to work and that frontline crisis intervention is required to break the cycle of dependency our clients face.
“What we are calling for is an increase in frontline crisis intervention and a renewed campaign to inform, enable and empower clients to finally break the cycle of food bank dependency.”
To make a donation and for more info on CAB, visit www.stirlingcab.org.uk
Those most in need are usually ending up paying for energy in the most expensive ways