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The following article by Polly Toynbee, appeared in issue 40 of resource magazine, SEP-OCT 2005.

VITAL SERVICES NEED FUNDING

Comment

With many furniture re-use projects struggling to support themselves it’s high time local authorities started to recognise the range of social benefits they provide, says Polly Toynbee.  

There are not many such brilliant win-win services that are so unsung – and often so underfunded – as furniture re-use organisations. There are now some 300 at work, employing 5,000 people collecting 63,000 tonnes of old furniture and appliances to recycle and offer to those who need them.

In fact it’s more of a win-win-win with those organisations that offer training schemes to help people gain skills and earn qualifications in furniture repair at the same time. In a project I opened in May in Eastbourne, people with mental health problems were learning decorative furniture painting, including such expert marbling that everyone who passed by had to touch it to check it was wood and not stone.

In a throwaway world there is great satisfaction in rescuing serviceable furniture and appliances, including the 300,000 fridges reused by the sector each year. It is also a service to thecommunity, taking away unwanted lumber for free, preventing stuff being left to rot in the street and reducing the amount of waste to be dumped in landfill.

I first encountered the service run by the Shaftesbury Society in Camberwell when I was researching my recent book, Hard work: life in low pay Britain . I took up a challenge by Church Action on Poverty to see if I could live on the minimum wage. Starting out living at the rate of the Job Seeker’s Allowance, I rented a flat on the Clapham Park estate in Lambeth in a block that was unlettable while it was being refurbished. I took what jobs I could get from the local Job Centre and tried to live on around £4.50 an hour.

There were many shocks and surprises. But landing in a stone cold empty flat without anything at all is an experience that all too often happens to many people through family breakdown, newly arrived refugees or those leaving mental hospital or prison. The desolation is terrible – families often find themselves sleeping on overcoats on the floor for weeks before their social fund payment comes through. Even then, the social fund pays out very little: without the Shaftesbury’s furniture re-use project I couldn’t possibly have acquired a bed, a table and chair, a settee, some crockery, a fridge and a cooker. The people running the project talked of the utter despair of people arriving there and their sheer relief at finding so much help.

I wanted to write this book because so many well-heeled people don’t believe real poverty still exists. I wanted to show that try as you might, it just is not possible to survive without charity on the minimum wage. Within a few weeks I was in debt, despite counting every penny, walking everywhere and never managing to own more than three light bulbs. Too many people think poverty is due to fecklessness or bad management. But the very act of moving from benefit into work creates debt, when your first pay cheque only comes in two weeks later. As a dinner lady I wasn’t paid for a full month: how are you supposed to survive in that time without getting into debt from which you never escape?

Sadly, furniture re-use projects only survive from hand to mouth, often relying on grants that only last three years. These projects should be a part of every local authority’s budget, as they are such a valuable asset to the whole community.

I was shocked to find the Eastbourne and Lewes project struggling over its brilliant training programme: the money to fund trainees only arrives after each one has completed their qualification, and since these were people with mental problems, often they took longer than the fixed time allowed to reach the end of the course, in which case funding was denied altogether. The local Further Education college creams 40 per cent of the fee off the top without offering any of the training themselves. And then officialdom wonders why these programmes aren’t self-financing. Furniture re-use projects should be part of every local authority budget.  

Polly Toynbee is a broadcaster and Guardian columnist, and was formerly Social Affairs Editor of the BBC. ” Hard work: life in low pay Britain ”, is published by Bloomsbury .

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