‘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 food banks 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 jennies 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 food bank. But the moment they’ve got a human being on their doorstep asking if they’re OK, 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.

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While many aren’t in and many more say they’re OK, 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 has 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.”

She thinks about this. “This isn’t even as bad as it’s going to get,” she says. “This is just the start.” And yet, perhaps this team is at least offering some kind of hope. While some undoubtedly appear miffed at council staff turning up on their doorstep, the workers are widely greeted with a smile and gratitude. There is a sense that this is someone who cares. At a wider level, there is some hope that by identifying more people in need, it can help the council better target resources.

“The thing with Oldham is it’s full of wonderful people and they don’t give in easily,” says Flowers. “It’s going to be a long, hard winter – and perhaps beyond too – but we can get through this together.”

In the bottom draw of her office filing cabinet at Beever Primary School, Katie Greaves keeps a range of unusual items: flannels, soaps, toothpaste, toothbrushes and breakfast cereals.

Every day, a handful of pupils will arrive at this school – in the town’s St Mary’s area, one of England’s most desperately deprived neighbourhoods – unwashed and unfed.

As pastoral officer, it is part of Greaves’ job to discreetly identify such youngsters and freshen them up. Sometimes, she will change them from dirty uniforms into clean ones.

The process has long been routine in an area where more than three-quarters of the pupils are among the UK’s very poorest households. Yet, this term, it is no longer a handful of pupils – the numbers are growing. Pertinently, more and more youngsters from families with working parents are among those coming in hungry, wearing unwashed uniforms.

Greaves says: “They don’t volunteer they haven’t had breakfast but there will be clues and when you ask, it will be, ‘Oh, we’ve ran out of cereal at home this morning, Miss.’ We have such wonderful children and to see that, it’s heartbreaking.”

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Schools – themselves facing severe budget shortages – are very much on the front line of this unfolding calamity. At Beever Primary, where two in three students are eligible for free school meals, headteacher Greg Oates is warning that a generation of youngsters may never reach their full potential in school because of the economic crisis.

“We are among the most deprived school communities in the country so we have always had to deal with the challenges that brings,” he says. “But what we are seeing now is just an appalling widening of people in dire straits, worse even than during Covid.

“There are more children coming in hungry or in unwashed clothes or not feeling well because they are living in cold, damp houses, and the consequence of that is you have a cohort of young people who cannot concentrate properly and who are less healthy. So you have children who cannot achieve what they could have done if those external factors were different. Their futures are being impacted right now.”

Among the more difficult things he has witnessed this term are pupils without lunch or with nothing more than mouldy bread or fruit. It has become apparent, he says, that some families simply cannot afford to run their washing machines. He describes a growing “slap-slap” sound as children walk through the school with the soles falling off their shoes. One mother told him her three children would have to put up with head lice because they couldn’t afford the treatment to deal with it.

“We’re seeing more children coming in tired, too,” says Oates, who has been head at the 245-pupil school since 2001. “When you dig into it, they are top-and-tailing with siblings in bed because they are living in over-crowded homes. The children will literally say to us that they didn’t get a good night’s sleep because their brother was moving about or, you know, there can be bed-wetting from younger siblings. I mean, Jesus, this is the UK in 2022.”

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One of his biggest concerns, he says, is that in the surrounding Coldhurst ward – where more than 60 per cent of people are out of work – the allure of crime may increasingly appeal. “There are gangs trying to play on that sense of hopelessness,” he says. “And young people may end up gravitating towards that.”

Like teachers everywhere, Oates and his staff do their best to cope. The school was rated “good” by Ofsted in April and, in the last year before the pandemic, 66 per cent of pupils achieved the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, compared with a national average of 65 per cent.

Yet the squeeze is also affecting schools’ ability to function. Rising bills mean 90 per cent of institutions fear they will run out of money next year, according to the National Association of Head Teachers. The Oasis academy chain, which has more than 50 schools, reported energy costs almost quadrupling in the last year, while anecdotal reports suggest some staff have been unscrewing lightbulbs to save cash.

As other public services are diminished, it is schools that find themselves picking up issues families cannot resolve elsewhere. One mother-of-six recently sought Oates’s help because their two-bedroom flat had become infested with rats and the social housing landlords had repeatedly delayed taking action.

“For many people in a community like this, we are the one consistent institution they deal with and so we become a focal point for everything,” he says. “In this country, you get the haves and have-nots, and…the biggest impact will absolutely be on communities like ours. It is the poorest that will disproportionately suffer and that will most see their life chances affected.”

The waiting room at the Royton Medical Centre is much the same as at any other GP surgery. There are chairs, information leaflets and one or two magazines kicking about. In one corner, however, there is an incongruous sign of the times: a food bank.

A table here is filled with tins, pasta, rice, packets of soup, biscuits and other dried goods.

“We have so many people coming in with issues where a big part of the problem is they’re just not getting enough to eat,” says Dr Zahid Chauhan. “So, we put a food bank here. We say, ‘Take what you need, no need to sign anything, just take what is appropriate for you.’ But this is not how a country should be in 2022. There should not be people so hungry they have to take pasta from a GP surgery.”

This has become one more front line in the cost of living catastrophe and Dr Chauhan warns that people may die in Oldham as a direct result of the squeeze.

“That’s my big concern,” he admits. I believe there will be significant harm done to vulnerable groups. That is the worry.”

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Surgeries in Oldham are seeing more breathing issues caused by damp housing, more aches and pains caused by long-term exposure to cold. There has been a rise in mental health problems linked to growing financial concerns, and an increase in immune system deficiencies sparked by lack of nutrition. Kidney damage, liver conditions and heart problems are all expected to surge as locals become unable to afford necessities.

“As a society, all these issues end up with a GP and so we end up medicalising them but, at their root, all have social causes,” says Dr Chauhan, who is also a Labour member of Oldham Council. “The system is falling onto its knees and that affects everyone in different ways but the final manifestation is always a health problem because whatever happens to you, it always impacts on your health.”

In a survey commissioned by the Royal College of Physicians earlier this year, more than half of people reported that their wellbeing had been negatively affected by the rising cost of living. The Health Foundation has called the situation an “emergency”.

In places like Oldham, these problems become even more acute. People here are more likely to be obese, diabetic and suffer with asthma than much of the country. Life expectancy for both men and women has declined here over the past decade, and is now roughly two-and-a-half years less than the national average.

The Oldham Health and Wellbeing Board has taken the step of releasing its first public demand for government action since 2017. “Figures of over 14,000 households in fuel poverty and 11,500 in food poverty will now increase as people struggle to meet their basic needs,” the board said last month. “This will have serious repercussions for the health of our population.”

Among measures it said must be taken are reinstituting the £20 universal credit uplift created during the pandemic and expanding eligibility for free school meals.

Yet for Dr Chauhan, back at his practice, while such measures will help, they are a sticking plaster.

“You know, the solution is not food banks or warm banks or doctors handing out prescriptions,” he says. “If we really want to eradicate the problems or issues then we need to have a national conversation about how we want our public services to work. Because at the moment, they’re not working like they should. The evidence is all around us. It’s our food bank right here. There needs to be a 10-year-long health and social care policy, signed up to by all parties, to get a system that is joined up and works.”

It is Tuesday evening and inside a non-descript building on a non-descript industrial estate on the outskirts of Oldham, two lush green football pitches are alive with people. Between 9am when the Kick Sonic five-a-side centre opens and 2am when it shuts, 800 players take to the turf every day. They come – all ages and all abilities – to compete against friends, family and colleagues. It is the sort of place where one is never too far from a shout of, “Have it!”

Today, however, the business – opened by eight brothers just three years ago – is one of hundreds locally facing an uncertain future. Spiralling energy prices and surging inflation means the cost of keeping both the heating and vast overhead lighting on has turned a success story into a business that is losing money.

“Our bills have gone up fourfold,” says Bilal Rahman, one of the brothers. “We’re getting to a position where our incomings don’t even cover our energy.

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“What we’re trying to do is diversify. You know, can we hold events in our upstairs room? But it’s not easy. The numbers show – they are the proof – that we are doing something people want. But this is the thing: even when you’re doing something that people want, right now, is that even enough anymore?”

To some extent, he and his family are better insulated than most. They own 13 businesses – including vape manufacturing and property management – with 45 staff and a turnover of more than £5m a year. That means that some businesses could be supported by others. “But that is not sustainable long term when all are taking a hit,” says 33-year-old Rahman.

In a poll conducted by the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce last month, 40 per cent of Oldham businesses said they had seen a downturn in the third quarter of this year.

“The economic backbone of enterprise here is local people rolling up their sleeves, showing innovation and working hard,” says Kashif Ashraf, president of Oldham Chamber of Commerce. “And it’s exactly those kinds of businesses – the ones that work on really tight profit margins – that can’t absorb these massive rises.”

How bad might it be? A pause. “I don’t think there’ll be a business in town that isn’t worried what is going to happen this winter,” the independent consultant says.

One such business is Bitter Sweet, the majestic dessert parlour and restaurant in Oldham’s recently converted grade II-listed Old Town Hall. Dr Rufzan Bibi is a family solicitor by trade but opened this eatery in February 2020, partially, she says, to give something back to her hometown. “I wanted to create something special here,” she says. “Something that was a real destination place for Oldham; that gave the town centre a little bit of magic.”

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Yet like hospitality businesses everywhere, Bitter Sweet, all marble floors and arched ceilings, is getting hit twice. By rising costs on one hand – a box of chicken, she says, has doubled in price – and falling customer numbers on the other. “There is no answer to it,” she says. “If you don’t put your own prices up, you are losing money. But if you do put them up, you lose even more customers. You cannot win.”

What she has done is reduce staff hours and limited opening times. “But these things which have a wider impact too,” the 47-year-old mother of three says. “We used to open until 10pm and I would love to still do that. I want Oldham to come alive in the evening. But we cannot justify staying open that late now. Which means even fewer people coming into the town.”

A vicious circle? Yes, she reckons, and one that it feels increasingly difficult to get out of.

“I will do everything possible to stay open and I will make it work,” she says with determination. “But there will be places that close because of this crisis. Who knows what the town centre will be like by the end of it all?”

Get talking with Amanda Chadderton – the leader of Oldham Council – about food banks and she does not mince her words.

“Fifteen years ago, a food bank wasn’t a thing,” she says. “Now you see politicians cutting ribbons to open them as though it’s a good news story that people are starving. What? The same with warm banks. What kind of country are you when people can’t heat their own homes?”

It is a question many are asking this winter – yet perhaps few are better placed to understand the current situation than Chadderton, as leader of one of the UK’s most deprived towns. “This is a bigger crisis than the pandemic,” she says. “And the long-term impact is going to be deeper and longer.”

Chadderton, a local lass and mother of one who became leader of the Labour-run council in May, does not hold back as she speaks to The Independent in her office at Oldham’s 15-storey civic centre.

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This crisis, she says, could consign places like Oldham to years more hardship just as it was attempting to recover from austerity and coronavirus.

“I thought people’s lives should get better, you know?” she says. “I thought this was a society where my life should be better than my mum’s, and my daughter’s should be better than mine. But what we’re seeing is more children being pushed into poverty … and I suppose the fear is, at some point, do people snap? You hope you never see civil unrest but … this poverty is a political choice.”

Today, Oldham’s industrial heritage can still be seen in grand mills and imposing civic buildings. The council, meanwhile, is spending £42m redeveloping the Spindles shopping centre into a retail, leisure and office hub. Eton College is to build and run a selective sixth form right in the town centre, later this decade.

Yet this is, unambiguously, a town where hardship is a way of life today. As a 2017 report noted, the town’s economy has become “over-dependent upon relatively low-skilled and low-wage enterprise”. After the council and the NHS, the biggest employers are Tesco, Asda and Shop Direct.

To add to the woes, housing is among the worst in the country. Two-fifths of all properties in Oldham are terraced, much of them built for 19th-century mill workers. Some 6.6 per cent of homes in the town are officially classed as overcrowded, compared with less than 4.5 per cent nationally. “They’re not fit for purpose, people shouldn’t be living in those homes,” says Chadderton. “What we really want is a clearance programme but that’s not coming down the track at the moment.”

Now, the cost of living crisis is set to exacerbate those issues.

“There is less investment so, long term, you stay low skilled and low wage,” says Chadderton. “So, it makes it even harder for our residents in the future to access opportunity. It embeds poverty.”

Some 600 new families are being referred to social services every month, while a new helpline – set up to advise those struggling with finances – received 1,700 calls in its first four weeks. An emergency £3m is being spent on a cost of living package which includes creating warm banks in libraries, a system of home heating grants and the expansion of the doorstep engagement team.

“That’s a lot of money in the context of Oldham,” says Chadderton. “But the reality is it’s not going to help lift our residents out of poverty. Only the national government can do that. All this will do now, really, is reduce some suffering.”

If this is a place looking at the worst of winters, it is also place where people are rallying around to help; where there is defiance in the face of difficulties; and where humour – often gallows – remains intact.

“Cost of living crisis?” one resident queried The Independent at one point this week. “This town’s been in one since the Seventies.”

Chadderton considers this. “We will get through it,” she says. “If I didn’t believe Oldham couldn’t have a bright future, I wouldn’t be doing this. We’ve just got to try and minimise the pain of the next few years.”