The impact from the cost of living crisis on our community

Attia and Heather from our Tech to Community Connect team spent the day at a local Job Centre to talk to our community about The Coalition, our different projects and how we can help people. It gave us an opportunity to meet and chat with new people and share the cost of living survey.

This led to several conversations with members of the public about the struggles of not being able to afford food, missing meals or not having the heating on due to the increasing cost.

Attia mentioned about local food banks and community fridges but learnt from conversations that they would often go and find there isn’t much food available, due to them being in high demand. Which leads to the question – if food banks or community fridges don’t have food, where do people turn to next?

Another common issue that was discussed was avoiding putting the heating on due to the increase in bills. We have had some very cold winter days and local Warm Hubs provide a safe, warm place for people to visit, and some do provide free Wi-Fi.

Attia learnt from chatting with the community that it could be a good idea for Warm Hubs to run activities or learning programmes as an opportunity for people to develop skills.

As The Coalition team left the Job Centre, one message was clear, more needs to be done to help the community during the cost of living crisis and food banks are in need of more donations.

You can find out more information about how to donate to your local food banks via the following link: Donate Food – The Trussell Trust

To find out more information about Surrey’s food banks, warm hubs and community fridges visit the following links:  Social wellbeing – Surrey County Council (surreycc.gov.uk), Home – Mid Surrey Community Fridges and List of warm hubs in Surrey – Surrey County Council (surreycc.gov.uk)