Last month we reported how St Peter’s Church and Ruddington Parish Council were launching a village initiative to help those here who may struggle to both feed their families and heat their homes this winter.
Whilst, thankfully, the Chancellor’s ‘Autumn Statement’ this week has left the current UK energy price caps in place throughout the coldest part of the year, already soaring gas and electricity costs are presenting a challenge for many in Ruddington. That’s why a public ‘Open Meeting’ was held in St Peter’s on October 18th 2022.
Church member Liz Mack reveals: “After some brilliant ideas and suggestions from the breadth of views in the room, we decided it would be helpful to set up a smaller enabling group, who would find out more and offer suggestions to ways we might promote and encourage warm spaces opening up within the village over the coming colder months. It was the consensus that a big motivator for offering warm spaces, in addition to the more obvious need of providing warm public spaces, was also to promote community and friendship, especially as things begin to bite and Christmas around the corner, another worry for many people awaiting big energy bills.”
Since then, this new ‘enabling group’ has discussed how to progress further warm spaces, pulling together a list of all the places around our village currently that could be considered a ‘warm space’, what they offer, and who they are for: “We also noticed more and more public places opening recently to offer a warm space, often with free refreshments and activities, as we tried to find the best way of advertising them within the community without taking overall responsibility for them” explains Liz.
The group’s findings were then discussed by Ruddington Parish Council at its full meeting on November 9th. Councillors resolved to support initiatives as and when they come forward and to help develop new initiatives where they were needed. This could mean extensions of current activities such as coffee mornings, targeting hard to reach people or providing spaces when other parts of the building are already in use. Moreover, Parish Clerk Claire Dorans was given the authority to make decisions on behalf of the Parish Council without having to seek authorisation beforehand, in a bid to stop delays.
Liz says this is very welcome news: “It makes a lot of sense if places and groups that are already open to the public could add a couple of hours onto their opening times which would not cost a lot extra in heating to themselves. However, at St Peter’s we have also been looking for funding for extra heating so that as a church we can stay open longer, although our big church building is not the most ideal place to heat as its so huge! Certainly for churches, which are often large open spaces themselves, are not the most heat and cost effective but we are uniquely placed as a central point in our communities to welcome and host and care for people.”
She also flags a new community group, called Warm Welcome Spaces, which has now set up a national scheme where anyone can register a warm space open to the public – include anything else they offer and be put onto a national map so people in their locality can find them. St Peter’s Church has already added its ‘Heat ‘n’ Eat’ initiative to this scheme as a trial; with the caveat that people need to book via ‘Eventbrite’ if they would like a meal, but that anyone can go along for friendship and teas and coffees.
Liz adds: “We’re very fortunate that, between us and the large group that first met, we have lots of connections around the village and so can hopefully help people with this. Ruddington is full of very caring people who want to look after our neighbours and its one of the great joys of being part of this community.”
Vicar of Ruddington, Revd Andrew Buchanan, agrees: “Times are hard (and are likely to get harder), but there is a dreadful irony in this, in that, in tough times there more opportunities to care and to make new friends. ‘Warm spaces’ are a wonderful necessity. We should all use them!”
A dedicated email address, ruddingtonwarmhub@gmail.com, has been set up for anyone who’s not already come forward to contact the enabling group – for them to try to help or signpost groups seeking to provide warm spaces.
