Community and Voluntary Sector

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Porter, on her excellent maiden speech.

Last Thursday, at a fund-raising quiz in Ludlow Brewery, Susie O’Hagan, the chief operating officer of the charity Hands Together Ludlow, outlined the aims of the charity: reducing isolation and loneliness; helping people remain independent; supporting the most vulnerable; and building networks across the town. Ludlow is a wonderful market town with much history, but it has wards in the most deprived categories and the numbers of people registered disabled and children on pupil premium are above the national average. Salaries in Ludlow are 12% below the national average, and it is the southern tip of a financially failing council. Hands Together Ludlow receives no public finance and raises running costs from trusts, individuals and fundraising. The brewery fundraising quiz was sponsored by MFG Solicitors.

To best illustrate the work of Hands Together Ludlow, Susie simply described the work it had carried out in three days last week—last Thursday evening, she described Monday to Wednesday. Volunteers collected 145 kilograms of surplus food from local supermarkets and stocked the community fridge they operate. In those three days, the community fridge served 57 people and distributed all the surplus food. Some eight people worked in the men’s shed, which also caters for women. Rough sleepers were fed and supported to engage with other services. Someone was provided with a phone and a quiet space to access universal credit. The charity organised for a 90 year-old with no food in the house to be taken shopping, followed up with a visit to the doctors’ surgery and a social worker to agree a forward plan. It liaised with 30 organisations across the county to identify sharing-information opportunities and keep Ludlow on the map. It explored improvements in the referral process for the household support fund and looked at how it could better support people to apply to the fund. It also responded to issues received from Facebook, the telephone and the website—from finding financial advisers to offers of free wood, requests for a befriender and how to dispose of white goods.

Some 37 people were fed at the community lunch, and the charity served another 22 in its own community space; 10 people were taken for a social walk around town followed up with refreshments. The charity provided mindful colouring and board games social sessions, walked a dog whose owner was ill, planned for an event to highlight and celebrate volunteering in Ludlow, and met with the town council to plan co-delivery of a new food project. Some nine lonely people spent an hour with a volunteer befriender, and the charity organised and supported 40 volunteers to deliver 111 hours of activity. All that happened in just those three days.

That was Susie’s brief introduction to what the evening was about. These activities cannot be delivered without a secure infrastructure of small staff and building costs. The charity has to stay flexible to meet the needs of the town, as statutory services are cut, closed or moved out of town to Shrewsbury. Last year, 18,332 hours of volunteer time was given. Small local charities, such as those we have heard about today, keep society going. They reduce isolation for individuals and help them maintain independence, and they support the most vulnerable.

Finally, the thing noble Lords will want to know—the quiz team we were on included the mayor, and we came fourth.