Age UK to release £5m from reserves to prevent more network closures

National charity Age UK has said it will use £5m from its reserves to support its local subsidiaries during the winter. Speaking in parliament yesterday, the main charity’s head of network resilience, Kirsty Gaskell-Sinclair, said three local Age UK charities closed last year and she expects to see more in the next 12 months. She said many of the charity’s around 123 local subsidiaries across England were using their own reserves to cover “shortfalls in their services as the cost-of-living starts to impact on their income”. In a recent internal survey, most local Age UK charities reported experiencing a “significant adverse impact” from the cost-of-living crisis, driven by increased heating and electricity bills. These higher costs have been compounded by local subsidiaries “having to up their salaries to retain staff” while having “shrinking volunteer numbers”, Gaskell-Sinclair said. – See more here.