Housewares Business-to-business magazine for housewares retailers and their suppliers
With fuel and utilities taking huge price hikes this month, many will be feeling the pinch of unexpectedly high bills. The Rainy Day Trust has a range of support initiatives designed to help those who need it. It is YOUR charity and can help your people.
Direct financial assistance is available to those on lower salaries, and the charity has many other initiatives that can kick in for everyone. The Trust can send out Let’s Save Energy packs of LED lightbulbs and eco shower heads that can help to reduce energy bills permanently by up to £300 a year.
“I don’t know what happened where you live, but here in Wiltshire yesterday, petrol jumped by 10p a litre,” said Bryan Clover, CEO at the Rainy Day Trust, in a communication on Saturday. “It is now £1.62 for a lt of diesel with unleaded not far behind. On the same day, I got an e-mail from Bulb saying that from 1 April my monthly direct debit for gas and electricity was going up from £187 a month to £221 a month, already up from £112 a month in December. Even though both my wife and I work full time, those rises are going to sting, so what about the folks working with you where maybe they are part-time or a one-parent family? Or have caring responsibilities for a parent? The simplest solution is to engage with us, share our message with your staff and let us help you to help them.”
Bryan urges employers across the industry to get the word out to every one of their staff so that the Trust can help them.
“These are unprecedented times economically and what is happening in Ukraine is going to push oil prices higher and will inevitably impact on food prices too,” he said. “We are hearing about staff leaving their jobs to earn £1 extra an hour because their focus is putting food on the table. Every time that happens, the business has to go through a recruitment round and the replacement – if you can actually find someone – takes a while to bed in, which hits your profits.”
