Heartbreaking choices as we fight to survive
NORMAN Phillips is just days from losing Ros, his beloved wife of 40 years, to Multiple Sclerosis and dementia. For 20 years, he has been her nurse and constant companion, so that even on her darkest days, she has never felt alone. But if preparing for her death wasn’t awful enough, Norman, 70, now lives in constant fear… of their rising bills.
From April 1, next Friday, his gas and electricity costs will more than double from £150 to £332 a month. Like millions, he is struggling with the worst cost of living crisis in a generation, caused by spiralling energy and food prices and rampant inflation. Norman knows he cannot keep up, and is consumed by anxiety.
“I didn’t sleep one wink all night,” he told me at his bungalow in Stevenage, Herts. “I came into the lounge, got my tablet out and went through my budget. What can I cut?”
And when the inevitable happens to Ros, 72, he knows that he will be torn between grief and terror about his own future.
All her benefits will stop. His council tax will rise by a third. Their car will go because the mobility allowance that pays for it will
’They wander the supermarket aisles, waiting for a member of staff to reduce food prices’
be axed. Norman may even lose his home because it is accommodation for the disabled and their carers.
He is understandably angry. “It’s the fact I’m forced into having to think about what am I going to do while Ros is still here,” he says. “It feels selfish because instead of thinking this is my loved one who I’ve got to take care of, I’ve got to think how am I going to plan for this? Where will I live? You shouldn’t have to think like that.”
In this week’s Spring Statement Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a basic income tax rate reduction of 1p – from 2024. Which is no good to Norman, who will have to return to work this year. He hoped for assistance with gas and electricity bills.
“This does not help us at all,” he messages me after Wednesday’s speech. “At some point, maybe by October, I will be unable to survive financially – not much reward for a lifetime of work, then 13 years of unpaid caring.”
Carers Trust’s Chief Executive Officer, Kirsty McHugh, agrees. “Unpaid carers will be bitterly disappointed by the Spring Statement,” she said.
“There was little announced that shows the Government understands their plight. Many were missing bill payments, cutting back on food and borrowing money before the cost of living crisis.”
The arrival of warmer weather offers no respite. “It won’t make any difference,” Norman says. Direct debit customers will pay an average £693 per year more for their energy, while households with a pre-payment meter – often the poorest – face hikes of £708. Another hike is due in October.
“Increasing energy prices are the last straw for lots of older people on fixed incomes,” says Caroline Abrahams, Age UK Charity Director.
Retired GP computer manager Sandra Prince already struggles to pay the £600 monthly rent on her one-bedroom flat in Dawlish, Devon. After bills, she survives on £25 per week.
We meet when the weather is still cold. Sandra, 74, wrapped in her favourite woollen shawl, sits next to her electric fire. The amber flames flicker but the heat is switched off. “It tricks my brain into thinking I’m warm,” the grandmother-of-four explains.
She pays £60 per month for energy and her fixed contract runs out in June. Because she has no savings or private pension, she plans to cancel her direct debit.
“I could cope with a £20-a-month rise but this isn’t going to be that,” she says.
Her small home is full of books, photos and ornaments collected over a lifetime. She moved here four years ago after mushrooms sprouted from the ceiling of her damp previous flat.
A photo of Sandra, her arms wrapped around daughter Sarah, has pride of place. Sarah lives in Australia with her three children and Sandra misses her dreadfully.
Her two sons live nearby and help out, but her main companion is Molly, her beloved dog.
Sandra has managed on a budget all her life but, for the first time, she’s scared. She has tried to find a cheaper bedsit but no potential landlord will take Molly.
“She’s like another human being when you get to my age and have no other company,” she says.
An estimated 6.5 million households are expected to fall into fuel poverty next month, says National Energy Action. “We will see households falling into more debt or in unhealthy living situations, especially if there are further significant rises in October,” says the charity’s Head of Policy Matt Copeland.
“Unlike the Government’s ‘heat now, pay later’ rebate, we want to see a further rebate to low-income households that doesn’t have to be paid back – at least for the poorest.”
Mark Watson, 61, is £1,200 in debt and already living in fuel poverty in his one-bedroom flat in Whitley Bay, near Newcastle.
Asked how he will meet rising costs, he sighs: “There’s not much I can do. I’m pretty shrewd when it comes to buying food. I’m not extravagant and I like cooking.” Proud father-of-three Mark talks constantly about
his grown-up children Louis, Carlie and Josh. Photographs of them sit on a noticeboard in his kitchen.
“Everything in the cupboards is from the food bank,” he says as he makes me tea.
Twelve years ago, Mark was happily married and lived in a five-bedroom bungalow. Life was good. He produced designs for major brands as a layout artist. The family enjoyed foreign holidays.
But when his work became computerised, Mark was made redundant. Then he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and spent a year in hospital. After his marriage broke down, he moved into his current home.
“Everything in here is from a charity shop,” he says, indicating the armchair, the table and the lamps.
It’s been a difficult winter. Mark spent three months without heating after his gas boiler broke down and he couldn’t afford repairs. Then several days before Christmas, the electricity on his meter ran out.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Suffering from a flare-up of sciatica, a nerve pain exacerbated by cold, he sat in the dark swathed in blankets with only candles for light and warmth. “Things were s**t,” he admits. “My sciatica was bad and I had no money. I was miserable.” He’s a proud man.
His mother died when he was ten and he helped his father raise his three younger siblings. So it hurt to ask his family for help. His stepmother sent £30 to top up his electricity.
“I was probably seen as the most successful out of my brothers and sisters with the highest-paid job, and best house and car. It was hard to say I was in trouble,” he says.
Mark’s boiler was fixed by an engineer visiting his neighbour who took pity on him, and he topped up his meter with a one-off payment for low-income households.
Like Norman, he is full of dread for what the future holds. And like Mark, Norman once had a successful career.
Until 2008, Norman, right, worked 60-hour weeks as a project manager for Fujitsu. Half his income went on care for Ros.
Exhausted, he took early retirement but couldn’t pay the bills and the couple lost their home.
“We went from wanting things to needing things,” he says. He had no choice but to keep the heating on all winter because Ros’s life depended on it. “If it was my decision I could make it but I’m affecting someone who’s vulnerable,” he says.
They married when she was 21 and he was 19. He was a British Telecom apprentice and Ros was a telephonist. “Our idea of a night out was at the Lyceum Ballroom in The Strand,” he smiles.
Ros developed colitis and a blood disorder affecting her immune system in her midtwenties after having her children Mark and Caz. She was diagnosed with MS aged 39 but worked for as long as possible.
“She was always there for the children,” Norman says. He references the famous Bette Midler song, Wind Beneath My Wings as how he feels about Ros.
“She’s always fought so hard but to see her like this breaks my heart,” he says, his voice cracking.
He has considered scrapping her readymeal service but cooking from scratch would mean less time with Ros – and that time is precious now.
“Looking after her is a full-time occupation, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he says. “It’s hard. There is no normal relationship, you’ve become their carer.”
Sandra and Mark also worry about food. Her bookcase is crammed with cookbooks. “The student vegetarian ones always have good ideas for cheap meals,” she says, handing me a book with a £1.50 charity shop sticker on it.
She has osteoarthritis and gallstones, which she controls with a low-fat diet. Her brother died aged 48 of a heart attack, as did her father aged 56. Her doctor told her that being vegetarian and a non-smoker probably saved her life. But eating healthily is increasingly expensive. Prices have soared following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – 30 per cent of the world’s wheat comes from those two countries. Sandra takes me to Dawlish Farm Shop. It’s cheaper than her local supermarkets. She places potatoes and onions in her basket. She glances longingly at the grapes (£4.50 a kilo) and the avocados (£1.50 each), and walks on.
Like Sandra, Mark’s food choices are all about price.
“They don’t put up prices by 5p or 10p, it’s more like 25p or 50p now – bigger jumps than in the past,” he says.
His meals are designed around pennies, not pounds. He picks up 50p stir-fry sauces that last four meals when paired with frozen vegetables.
Mark gets upset seeing the single mothers he knows trying to make ends meet in supermarkets.
“They wander aisle after aisle not putting anything in a basket, waiting to spot a member of staff with a pricegun to reduce food,” he says, his voice wobbling.
Like most budget shoppers, he knows what time the discount stickers appear. It’s 9pm at his local Morrison’s. He buys pizza reduced from £1.50 to £1.
Sandra, meanwhile, has switched Molly’s dog food to a cheaper brand. She will do without her favourite Quorn roast, costing too much at £5, and hopes to sell books and a nearly-new halogen cooker to make £50, which still won’t pay for a month’s energy.
Mark, Sandra and Norman are doing everything possible to reduce costs, but know it’s not enough.
Matt Copeland from NEA warns of devastating consequences. He said: “The Government must use spring and summer to formulate a real plan ahead of next winter if we are to avoid the worst of cold homes, debt and needless deaths.”
’At some point, maybe October, I’ll be unable to survive. Not much reward for a life of hard work and caring’
●For energy advice and support, contact nea.org.uk