Press Release 16 April 2024 WINTER HOMELESS PROJECT PROVIDED ACCOMODATION FOR WEST BERKSHIRE HOMELESS FOR 117 NIGHTS Local homeless support charities came together in the autumn of 2023 to provide people who would otherwise have been street homeless in West Berkshire with access to a safe place to sleep during the winter months. Emergency accommodation…
Building a Village hall
Greenham Trust’s logo can be found in most of the village halls around West Berkshire and north Hampshire. We previously ran a scheme specifically to help support improvements and reconstruction. Although the specific scheme has now ended, we still support these types of projects through our general giving. Whether that’s a small grant for a…
Cost of Living Blog 2024
2023 was a hectic year with several different streams of work helping to make positive impacts on our community. Whether it was increasing our youth provision, helping refugees, or supporting our local sports clubs, the main theme throughout was Cost of Living. As you may have seen, it’s been front and centre of our website…
Guest Blog – Cost of Living Crisis September Update
Cost of Living update by Meryl Praill, CEO Newbury Soup Kitchen Statistics with great thanks to West Berks Foodbank, West Berkshire Homeless and CAB West Berks. It’s very difficult out there now and things are changing all the time. We have noticed a change in people’s habits recently due to mental health, addiction and…
Guest Blog – West Berks FoodBank
It is our 10th anniversary at the Westberks Foodbank this year and demand is outstripping supply . We have 4 foodbank centres open, Thatcham, Newbury, Hungerford and Burghfield and Mortimer. We are opening a new centre in Tilehurst in July. We deliver 3 times a week throughout West Berks. We regularly support the following charities…
Guest Blog Citizens Advice Cost of Living Update
Citizens Advice West Berkshire Blog – The Cost of Living Crisis is far from over The cost of living crisis isn’t going away. Citizens Advice has been warning for some time that the cost of living crisis would soon morph into a household debt crisis. We could see problems were looming. At Citizens Advice West…
Bereavement Support
Cruse Bereavement Support – offering advice, support, and information to people after bereavement. We recently caught up with Casper, Chair of Cruse Bereavement Support at the networking event at Shaw house, who explained to us that they are looking to expand their outreach initiative to ensure that people and organisations are better informed about the…
Cost of Living Statistics
What we’ve been doing
Cost of Living Crisis What we’ve been doing. Part of the Cost-of-Living Appeal has been asking the general public for donations that we can Match Fund on our giving platform The Good Exchange. Over the past 12 months from a national perspective public charitable giving has been down. Our analysis shows that this…
Cost of Living Crisis
This is the first edition of a regular Blog I will be doing together with some of my grant giving and property colleagues from Greenham Trust.
Chris Boulton, CEO Greenham Trust
Over the last two weeks, Greenham Trust has been talking to charities and organisations on the front line of the cost-of-living crisis in West Berkshire and north Hampshire to get an understanding of what 2023 is going to look like for them and crucially what support we can provide for them during this worryingly tough time for the community we support.
CPI Inflation looks to have peaked, and the Bank of England has suggested that it is expected to return to around 4% by the end of this year. In their latest forecast, the BoE expects the path of the Bank Base Rate to rise to around 4.5% in mid-2023 and is expected to then fall back to just over 3% in three years’ time.
This means prices are going to remain high but will just be going up at a slower rate. Without any relief from mortgage rates dropping significantly in the short term then consumers are going to continue to feel the squeeze for the foreseeable future. A return to the low levels of interest enjoyed over recent years looks remote.
For the past 3 months to the end of January, both Newbury Community Resource Centre and West Berkshire Food Bank have seen record levels of demand for the support they can provide. NCRC are having to adapt Essential Household Goods Scheme to ensure they can help everyone, while the Food Bank are having to change some of their hours to evenings and weekends as they are now supporting more clients who are in paid work.
The other charities we have been in touch with are telling us they are seeing an increase in the complexity of the needs of the clients they work with. All the clients they see are struggling with household bills – particularly food and energy, increasing debt, let alone the impact this has with mental health. Some suggest these problems have now become chronic rather than relating to crisis.
All Charities we spoke to feel there are worrying warning signs but how that is going to manifest over the coming months is very unclear. So, although on the surface it could be argued there is an improving economic picture, people’s debt will continue to remain high with mortgage rates higher than the past few years and significant debt already racked up. People who are already in debt do not have a clear way out. Reliance on organisations and charities looks to remain critical for the rest of 2023 and beyond.
At the Trust we will remain in support of those front line charities who are there to help our local community. We have an ongoing appeal jointly with West Berkshire Council on our charitable giving platform, The Good Exchange where people can donate to help. We also have a fund available with Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council to cover similar cost of living crisis charitable needs.