The founder of an anti-poverty charity hailed as a hero for his work helping people during the cost of living crisis decided to help people because of a “sickening” boiler scam.
James Anderson is the man behind charity Disabled and Elderly Heating Emergency Repair (DEPHER) which provides a lifeline for thousands of struggling families.
He revealed he was inspired to help people when he was called to visit an elderly man who had been told he had to pay £5,500 for a boiler.
Called in to give a second opinion James discovered it had been tampered with.
He said: "He was an elderly gentleman up by Burnley Football Club. He was in a bed, had a hoist because he couldn't get up and he had carers coming in every day.
"Somebody else had manipulated the boiler so it would make noises, they managed to stop water from getting to the taps and so the gentleman believed he needed a new boiler.
"That's when I sat back and thought, how many other people are going through this same stuff?
“How many other people are getting ripped off?"
The 55-year-old now uses his own time to help others in a selfless venture partly motivated by his own experience of being homeless earlier in life, Lancashire Live reports.
His charitable work is not only inspired by his struggle with hardship but also by a promise he made during a personal tragedy.
In 2013, his baby son William died and it was then he made a promise to become a better man in his memory.
He previously said: "I made a promise to William the day we turned that machine off. I said to him, 'that's it, I'm gonna be a better man. I'm going to be the man that you would have grown up to have been.
"I really do hope I've done him proud. Every time we go to a job, every time we say 'yeah', every time we show people humanity, there's a little bit of William in there.
"Lo and behold, we started doing DEPHER and hundreds and hundreds of people every week were telling us their stories and that's how we were born."
James says that in 2017, he was £18,000 in debt when he first began his charity work. It took him three years before he ever saw a penny of his own work come back into his pocket.
James says the charity's success went viral in 2019 when his small team saw a rapid influx of support and donations.
One of the most substantial of these came from a mystery London donor who paid off every penny of James' debts and was never seen or heard from again.
Since the pandemic hit, the charity says it has experienced a huge increase in demand for its services.
James said: “We only began offering the food, gas and electricity at the beginning of the pandemic and we haven't stopped.
"We got towards the end of the pandemic and we thought we might stop offering those services now and carry on concentrating on the plumbing and heating but then the cost of living crisis hit us but this time, much harder.”
