‘We are being abandoned’: when the energy bill goes up by £100,000 a day

theguardian.com:

The faint worry lines under Oona Goldsworthy’s eyes tell their own story. It has been a gruelling few weeks at the helm of Brunelcare, a charity that provides sheltered housing to 1,400 people and runs seven care homes in Bristol and Somerset.

“We were set up during the blitz when older people were being bombed out of their homes in Bristol. Our mantra then was to keep them warm, keep them fed, and keep them alive – and we haven’t really needed to worry about that in the decades since,” the chief excutive says at the charity’s head office in the city. “Now we’re in a situation where we need to make sure people are kept warm and we need to make sure people are fed.”

Last week Goldsworthy was forced to sign a new energy contract worth £7.7m because prices were rising by £100,000 a day. From October it will be paying more than five times what it used to pay for gas and electricity, which was about £1.5m a year. “We’re in an absolutely impossible situation. I’ve had one of the worst weeks ever and I’ve been through Covid so I know what hard times are like,” she says, shaking her head gently. “We are being abandoned again.”

Goldsworthy worries about the impact this huge financial burden will have on residents of the sheltered homes. Staff are desperately seeking to cut energy usage by 20% and ensure residents are claiming their full benefit entitlement, but she dreads the winter. “We are planning for an emergency,” she says. “Brunelcare alone does not have the means to help everyone through this cost of living crisis.”

Service charges paid by sheltered housing residents are likely to more than quadruple. “There is currently no protection for some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in this country because they do not buy