Meeting with the Bank of England.
On 7th October, we held a meeting here at our Wakefield office with the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Dave Ramsden. The meeting is part of series of ‘Community Forum’ meetings convened by the bank to feed information from communities to the decision makers in the Bank’s ‘Monetary Policy Committee’, which sets UK interest rates and to other high level decision makers.
The meeting brought together a wide range of VCSE partners including: Citizens Advice Wakefield District; Nova Wakefield; Prosper Wakefield; Age UK Wakefield District; Red Roof Centre Kinsley & Fitzwilliam; St. Mary’s Chequerfield; St. Georges Lupset and Vico Homes. The discussions especially focussed on the impact on our service users of high inflation, high interests rates and current economic conditions. We also discussed how these issues also impact on the VCSE sector.
There was real unanimity and common threads in our VCSE responses demonstrating just how cohesive and ‘partnership working’ the VCSE sector is in Wakefield. We were especially able to point out the difficulties facing charities that have fixed incomes at a time of rapidly rising costs including the increase in Employers NI that was imposed on the sector in April this year. We also discussed how the poorest areas of the district feel the heavy impact of rising bills, especially high food inflation and rising levels of personal debt incurred just to pay day-to-day bills.
