Warm ‘welcoming places’ will open in Glasgow next month to support residents struggling with soaring energy costs.
Bailie Annette Christie, the chair of Glasgow Life, which runs culture and sport facilities for the council, confirmed venues will be available during the winter to help people reduce their heating bills.
They will be designed around “social activities” to reduce “the stigma associated with poverty”, she said. Food and drink, money advice and health services could also be offered in the centres.
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Bailie Christie, SNP, the council’s convener for culture, sport and international relations, added: “To be clear, even where a venue has not been designated as a welcoming place, no citizen will be turned away from any open Glasgow Life building if they are looking for a warm space.”
She was responding to a question, during a full council meeting, from Bailie Patricia Ferguson, Labour, who then asked whether energy firms could be asked to contribute to the cost of running these venues.
Bailie Ferguson said firms, particularly those in Glasgow and Scotland, making “large profits” should be asked to make a “direct financial contribution” to the upkeep of the ‘welcoming places’.
Bailie Christie said: “It’s not within the remit of Glasgow Life to contact the energy companies but I will certainly, in discussion with my colleagues in the city government, discuss how much further we can go to make our dissatisfaction known with what’s happening in this country today.”
The Glasgow Life chair also said a mapping exercise is currently underway to identify the network of venues which will be open. Talks are ongoing with charity and faith groups to “establish the capacity to deliver activity and welfare services in any identified venue”.
“Given the paralysis engulfing Westminster in recent months and the refusal of any candidate in the Tory leadership race to commit to a meaningful package of support, the council and our partners have acted rather than await the outcome of any announcement,” Bailie Christie said.
She added ‘welcoming places’ would “offer respite for people enabling them to reduce their heating costs but also build social connection and get easy access to advice and support”. “The city council and Glasgow Life are planning to involve voluntary services and Glasgow health and social care partnership in this endeavour.
“Glasgow Life buildings have greater potential to be welcoming places through the availability of space and the provision of services that support social connection, access to information, advice and other welfare services, including the opportunity to access hot food and drinks.
“We are working towards the first welcoming spaces being active in October. Given the short time scale, these venues will be those that are currently opened.”
Bailie Ferguson said: “We know that in times of hardship it is the most vulnerable in our communities who are soonest and hardest hit. I think very much of those communities, like Drumchapel in my ward, and Netherton, and Ruchill, not so far away from us, where the community venues remain closed.
“It is important that they are reopened as they are vital to provide activity for young people whose parents perhaps now don’t have the option of taking them on an excursion to the cinema or the theatre because they are just not financially viable.”
Councillors also voted through a motion on the cost of living crisis which included a pledge to bring in the ‘welcoming places’, with a network which is “as extensive as possible”.
Cllr Blair Anderson, Greens, said: “Every level of government needs to be doing what we can to stop this crisis escalating even further and to save lives this winter.
“We can’t accept warm banks as just another feature of our failed social security system, like we’ve seen with food banks over the past decade of austerity. But in the face of inaction in Westminster, I’m glad that following today’s vote Glasgow will play our part in keeping people warm and safe this winter.”
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