Moray SNP News

LOCHHEAD HOSTS COST OF LIVING ROUNDTABLE MEETING

Richard Lochhead MSP has convened a cost of living roundtable, bringing together many of the organisations and charities supporting households across Moray cope with rising prices.

The Moray MSP has been contacted by families rights across Moray struggling to cope with high energy and food bills and in need of support, a trend also being picked up on by the organisations involved with the roundtable who have all experienced a sharp increase in referrals and queries:

• Moray Foodbank witnessed a 76% increase in referrals in May 2022 compared to May 2021.
• REAP have seen a 147% increase in queries over the last year.
• Moray School Bank’s referrals for support in 2022 (632) have already surpassed their total number of referrals for 2020-21 (478).

The roundtable looked at the impact the crisis was having as well as providing an opportunity for those represented to update their local MSP on what more could be done locally to assist those in need.

Commenting after the roundtable, Moray’s MSP said:

“It was good to be able to organise this roundtable and get all those working flat out to support hard pressed families together to look at what they’re seeing on a daily basis and pay tribute to those working on the front line helping those across Moray in need.

“There was discussion from all involved around the support and information out there as well as a look at how this can be collated to ensure that those coming forward for help can be offered advice from a host of different organisations.

“A number of good suggestions and points came out of the roundtable which I will be looking to pursue but organisations like Moray Citizens Advice and REAP are stretched and can only go so far in terms of directing clients to existing help out there. The UK Government need to finally step in and offer much more substantial support and protection for consumers against the further prices rises to come in October.

“The Scottish Government have expanded the Home Energy Scotland (HES) advice service, which provides free, impartial advice available to all households in Scotland on making homes warmer, greener and easier to heat, to support an extra 12,000 households a year, whilst the service offering bespoke advice to the most vulnerable households will be doubled.”