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How we can help


Rainy Day Trust’s CEO Bryan Clover outlines just some of the ways the charity can help our industry – from employees and directors finding themselves involved in a company that goes bust to the need for help with fuel payments.


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n January, I had to make an emergency statement through the press to outline how the Rainy Day Trust could help


employees in our industry. It was the second time I had had to do that in as many weeks. The most recent case was a housewares supplier ICTC and I urged all staff members to get in touch with us. We have an emergency grant programme that can respond very quickly if someone is made redundant unexpectedly. It can be a stressful time and our free counselling service can take away a lot of the worry. As well as direct financial assistance we can help in many other ways too – from training support to help with new courses to upskill or reskill; paying for advice on CV writing, housing debt or other legal issues. This is also a reminder should there be other businesses out there facing the cliff edge – get us involved early. We can work with you in the early days of any restructure so you can support your staff more effectively. We can save you money and time. The other area where we have been active in these cold months is Emergency Winter Fuel payments. One of the impacts of Brexit is a weakening of the pound against the dollar. Oil is priced in dollars and as such that means that energy prices paid by you and me have increased. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation


2 | www.gardencentreupdate.com


have stacks of data showing that fuel poverty is having a real impact on people's lives. Recent research by the Energy Trust has shown that 40% of people are frightened of turning the heating on in cold weather because of the cost implications. A third of people have stated that they can't heat their homes sufficiently. Statistically, that means that it isn't just confined to retired people on low pensions or the unemployed. It is impacting those in work too. I live in Wiltshire and the temperature overnight in January dropped to minus 7. In my book that's seriously cold. So what do we do? Ignore it and pretend that


it isn't happening or take a deep breath and help? At the Rainy Day Trust we have a winter fuel payment of £50 payable direct to your energy supplier so that during this exceptionally cold weather you can turn your heating on without worrying about the cost. We usually confine our assistance to those earning less than 60% of the average national wage, or about £16- 20k a year depending on your personal circumstances. But ...... as energy prices have increased, the proportion of their disposable income that families have to spend on heating is rising, so this year we have tweaked it up to £25k. This is not in any way a statement regarding pay policies of firms. It is a consequence of rising energy bills and how their reach is working its way up the pay scale. That salary equates to £396


a week after tax, from which families are paying rent or mortgage, food, petrol, clothing and so on. So if you are married with 2 kids, then when cold weather strikes, things get stretched. Having us pop £50 direct into your energy account can make a massive difference, and employers can demonstrate very clearly to their staff that they are working in partnership with a charity to look after them.


In an ideal world there wouldn't be a need for us to do this because central government would have it all sorted. But we live in an imperfect world, so here we are. Someone said to me the other day that £25k was a great salary, and so it is when everything is normal. But right now, the weather or the economic circumstances aren’t normal, so we are doing something about it. We exist solely to help people from the home


improvement industry. It is a golden opportunity for you to show those that work for you that you genuinely care about them and want to work with the Rainy Day Trust to give them additional help at absolutely no cost to you. So why not help your staff along a bit and encourage them to contact us? #showyoucare


We are your charity, so use us.


u0203 192 0486 uwww.rainydaytrust.org


GCU January/February 2019


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