Salford council has rejected calls to open more warm spaces in the city’s public buildings. The borough’s Conservative opposition group asked to set up new warm hubs for residents who may be struggling to keep warm or find it difficult to travel to existing facilities.
During a council meeting at Salford Civic Centre on January 15, they called to make use of libraries, community centres, and gateways to set up more hubs for people to escape the cold weather. This would involve using volunteers to ‘help people access these warm spaces either by walking with them or using other methods of transport.’
Coun Robin Garrido said there are people in the city who are ‘wrapping up in blankets because they are scared of putting their heating on’ as temperatures drop below zero some evenings.
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The motion also demanded that the council writes to the Chancellor to share concerns about recent changes to winter fuel payments, which the Conservatives claimed ‘is having a significant and detrimental effect’ on people’s ability to heat their homes.
Mr Garrido said places such as Worsley library, which is open three days a week, could be used more as a warm space to help support elderly residents. Salford Labour group voted down the plans – with deputy mayor Tracey Kelly saying the party ‘cannot support this motion without significant amendments’.
She added: “We already know there are a significant number of warm hubs across our city such as the council-operated gateways and local community centres, churches, and other public buildings.”
Coun Kelly said ‘there is a feeling that the changes to the winter fuel payment could have been handled better’ by the government, but pointed out that Salford’s council’s own local winter support payment is helping ‘those most in need’.
More than 2,000 households in Salford have been awarded a £200 winter payment from the council, out of nearly 3,000 invited to apply. The local support scheme was set up in November to help people of state pension age who get support through Salford’s council tax reduction scheme, but are not getting pension credits.
Since then the council has paid out nearly £420,000 to the city’s most vulnerable residents, Salford Labour said. Salford Conservatives’ warm spaces motion was first put forward in September, but was deferred until today.
Coun Garrido accused the Labour group of “playing politics with people’s lives” by voting it down. A Salford Labour spokesperson said: “14 years of Conservative economic mismanagement has hugely increased the number of households in this country living in fuel poverty.”
They added that the local Conservative group was ‘opportunistically portraying themselves as on the side of the most vulnerable in society’ after the previous government’s ‘austerity policies’.