‘It’s coming for everyone, like coronavirus’: The town sinking into poverty – and the people fighting back

On a cold, wintry day in Oldham, anguish and hardship seem to be behind every door that Stephen Flowers and his team knock at. There is the man who has spent three months sleeping on his floor because he cannot afford to replace his broken bed. There is the mother already fretting over how she will feed – never mind buy presents for – her children during the Christmas holidays. And there are the two pensioners who answer their door in hats and scarves. Are they getting ready to go out? No, love, they’re just terrified of putting the heating on.

Five days a week, Flowers and his 13-strong team go house to house across the town, knocking on doors to ask those inside how they are getting on and if they need any help. They are Oldham Council’s “doorstep engagement unit”, a pioneering response to this unfolding financial crisis.

Throughout the winter, they are set to visit tens of thousands of homes. They tell locals about services, offer advice, and refer those most in need to foodbanks or warmer home schemes. In one desperate case where a mother says she has only half a loaf of bread to survive a bank holiday weekend, one team member goes to the shop to pick up some groceries for her.

Once the heartland of the cotton industry, Oldham’s history is one of both textile innovation and, later, engineering brilliance. In the 1800s, there were said to be more spinning jennys here than any other town in the British Empire. In the Second World War, workers at the town’s Avro aircraft manufacturers spent their days building one of the country’s most celebrated planes: the Lancaster Bomber.

The destruction of both its mill and engineering industries were followed from 2010 by an especially eviscerating austerity: more than 40 per cent of the council’s central government funding was cut in a decade. Oldham now has seven council wards among the 10 per cent most deprived areas in the country. One in three children is classed as living in poverty. Wages are significantly below the national average; unemployment significantly above it.

With more than a million Britons set to be plunged into poverty by rising food and energy prices over the next six months, this Greater Manchester town of 242,100 is set to be on the front line of the cost of living crisis. Over the course of a week, The Independent found out how the cost of living crisis was seeping into every area of this town, pushing those already struggling into unimaginable poverty – and how members of the community, from schools to GPs to local leaders, are trying to lead the fightback.

“A lot of the people we’re seeing have been managing hand-to-mouth for years but now, suddenly, their wages or pensions or benefits aren’t even covering the essentials and they don’t know what to do,” says Flowers, one of the door-to-door team’s three operations leads. “They say they would never have picked up a phone to get help or gone to a foodbank. But the moment they’ve got a human being on their doorstep asking if they’re okay, the barriers come down.”

He sighs in the cold. “We’ve seen a lot of tears.”

Today, the team are working the town’s Littlemoor Lane area, focusing on a series of streets with high numbers of elderly residents and social housing tenants.

While many aren’t in and many more say they’re okay, thanks very much, there are plenty who open up to these strangers in hi-vis jackets on their doorsteps. A full-time father is directed to benefits he may be entitled to, while a pensioner – whose incomings barely cover her increasing food bills – is signed up for a food bank she did not realise she could get help from.

Then there is the mum-of-three who ends up crying within two minutes of team member Anne Quinlan asking how she is. Not good, she answers. Her husband’s left, she’s out of work and the electricity meter is running down fast despite a £50 top-up last week. Through her tears, the woman smiles when Anne says she’s there to help.

“What can you do?” she replies. “Rob a bank for me?”

Anne cannot do that, she admits. But she can, it turns out, help in another way. The woman is also, it seems, suffering dental agony and has been unable to book an appointment at her surgery. She is directed to an emergency appointments clinic she was not aware of.

“When you can make a difference, it is just a joy,” says team member Emma Sharp. “There is nothing more rewarding than it.”

The difficulty is that more and more people are in need of such help with each passing week.

The team have been visiting roughly 7,000 properties a month over the autumn with about 30 per cent of residents answering doors. Now, as the winter draws in, there has been an uptake in people admitting issues with rising costs.

“Even when we’re in what you’d think of as slightly wealthier areas, we’re getting people telling us they’re worried,” says Maxine Belcinergin, another operations lead. “This is coming for everyone. It’s like coronavirus. They said that was an illness that didn’t discriminate. It could get anyone. Well, this feels the same. It will hurt the poorest most but it will hurt everyone one way or another.”

The engagement team was set up in September 2020 to help Oldham deal with the pandemic. Its purpose in those days was to ask if residents were coping amid lockdowns, furloughs and a high local death rate. Later, it was said to be key to spreading positive news about Oldham’s vaccine drive. Then, as the health crisis morphed into a wider economic one, council bosses decided to keep the team.

“But it’s harder now,” says Belcinergin. “With Covid-19, it felt like you always had an answer for people. You could tell them when they’d be getting their vaccine letter or how to arrange food deliveries. But now – what can you say to someone who doesn’t have any money to put in their energy meter? There is some help out there but even that’s limited.”

Xural.com