Community Shops – The way forward?

Last month the first ever community shop opened its doors to shoppers who are in need by offering stock at a discounted rate, which would have otherwise been wasted.

The initial pilot is being held in Goldthorpe, Barnsley to 500 people who are finding it difficult to cope in the current financial situation and are on the cusp of poverty. The shop offers fresh, ambient and frozen food which has minor labelling errors, miss-forecasting or a short shelf life.

Until now, the items that this community shop offers would have gone straight to landfill. Now it can be used to help those who need it most. Hopefully this can prevent people from having to choose between heating their house and feeding their family – a choice that shouldn’t need to need to be made in this day and age.

As well as offering food at a discounted rate, the shop will also offer cooking classes, CV writing skills and budgeting advice, making it much more than just a shop.

This shop is the first of its kind in the UK, following successes in Europe of similar ‘social supermarket’ models. The plan is for this model of community shops to be implemented nationally this year.

It will be interesting to see what is learnt from this initial pilot as well as where the further stores are being planned to roll out later this year.

State of the Nation 2013

The State of the Nation 2013 report was released today from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, a statutory body set up to monitor the progress of the Government and others in tackling child poverty and improving social mobility.

The report states how the UK is not on track to meet the statutory goal of ending child poverty by 2020 and that what has been achieved with regards to social mobility could actually be reversed. One of the main points brought out by the report is that child poverty does not just affect those whose parents do not work, but is actually more likely to affect children who have working parents. It has become a taboo subject of trying to get people off benefits and into work, that sometimes it might not be worthwhile for them to get into work, forcing them to accept low paid jobs with low hours, actually increasing chances of poverty. It has now been reported that two thirds of children in poverty are living in working households.

Too often, the working poor are the forgotten people of Britain.

The IFS (Institute for Fiscal Studies) found that low pay is now more likely to encourage poverty than low hours do, although with the recent issue of zero hour contracts and an increase in part-time work (as opposed to full-time) particularly in Plymouth, this may not always be the case (see this article in the Plymouth Herald from today). It was also found that 1 in 5 full time-workers are classed as being low paid.

The report gives ten recommendations to help end child poverty and to improve social mobility. It says that this is something that the Government will not be able to achieve on its own, but it will be a collective effort, especially from parents and employers, but in the recommendations also mentions schools, universities and business leaders.

Over decades British Society has become wealthier but not fairer

Hopefully this report will encourage all those concerned to do what they can to reduce the amount of child poverty faced in the UK and help to achieve further social mobility so that the effects made so far are not reversed.