It’s hard to look back on 2023 as anything but a bruising year. Thankfully, communities pulled together to support each other where possible and more of the same will be needed in 2024.
The cost-of-living crisis is nothing new. Prices were soaring back in mid-2021 and then worsened following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in March 2022.
Inflation peaked back in October 2022 and, in 2023, failed to fall as fast as economists hoped.
But a lot of readers won’t have needed to refer to the facts and figures around inflation. Many have felt it right in their pockets.
In Bermondsey, parents and carers were driven into food poverty – forced to rely on donations from the Lions Food Hub.
This was true of food banks throughout the borough including a Peckham outlet that urged the government to increase universal credit payments for struggling families.
Rises in everyday items have been only one side of the nation’s wobbly economy. The other side is our failing national institutions which, plagued by strikes and funding crises, normal people have felt the brunt of.
While nurses walked out over historically low pay, an elderly couple living in Borough were left with “foul-smelling” bandages going unchanged for weeks – a situation so painful it left them housebound.
Meanwhile, Southwark Council has partially blamed a lack of government funding on its schools crisis, which has seen some shut their doors, and is piling pressure on vitally-needed nurseries like Kintore Way.
There simply aren’t enough column inches to recount the countless ways in which local lives have laboured under the strain of this bleak national moment.
But every cloud has a silver lining and, once again, Southwark people pulled together whenever it could.
At times, individual heroes shone. Only this week, nine-year-old Tony Hudgell was awarded a British Empire Medal (BEM) after raising £2 million for Evelina Hospital.
2024 also saw the return of Bermondsey Carnival which was cancelled the year before after a drop in government funding.
But this year it went ahead following generous donations from events company Assemble Gala and the commitment of local volunteers.
The tireless efforts of local people, filling the gaps where central government fails, will be needed over the next year.
2024 could well be a general election year with Rishi Sunak’s reported plans for a May 2024 election described as the ‘worst kept secret in Westminster’.
Polls suggest that increasing numbers of people are looking to Labour to shift the nation’s fortunes – even if it’s out of disdain for the floundering Conservatives rather than a passion for Starmerism.
Sunak’s local government funding settlement, announced in February, was better than many had hoped.
But recently published spending data for April to September 2023 shows local government spending on some areas, including children’s social care and homelessness services, still outpaced budgets.
With Starmer refusing to commit to public spending increases, local authorities like Southwark, which provide key services to the most vulnerable, remain on shaky ground.