Paul Arnott www.exmouthjournal.co.uk

Readers may have seen that East Devon District Council is setting up a new drive to support the amazing work of volunteers across East Devon, using funds from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

Often such schemes are loaded with acronyms which stand in the way of understanding what is really being facilitated. Who amongst us really knows what the VCSE sector is? The answer: the wonderful groups leading work in the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise area.

The best way to illustrate it is to look at the well-established work of the agency EDDC is partnering with to deliver the scheme, Devon Communities Together (DCT), whose website at http://www.devoncommunities.org.uk tells their story.

In essence, DCT tries to identify gaps in our response to making Devon communities sustainable, in an area where there are often hidden semi-rural and rural problems in small communities. This can be anything from advice for people trapped using oil for heating in the current crisis to advising on grant funding for emergency planning. Having seen the terrible effect of flash flooding in Newton Poppleford and Tipton St John recently, it is clear that many communities in East Devon do not have a resilience plan in place.

In other areas of their work, DCT encourage small business start-ups facing Devon-specific challenges, and were advisers to village halls and community centres last winter as they strove to provide warm hubs. They have also been a central agency recently supporting the organisation of the redistribution of surplus food to individuals, households and groups in order to reduce food waste, feed people and build community capacity and resilience.

It is completely pointless to get political about why this work is more crucial now than ever. You are a very lucky person indeed if you do not now personally know someone struggling with soaring mortgage interest rates, private rental charges or food inflation around essentials. What matters now is less about blaming the government and more about seeing how we can collectively respond.

Unfortunately, there is also worrying local news which I discovered on Monday this week is far from unique when I was told of a Hilton Hotel near Bristol Airport that has been housing migrants awaiting the processing of their applications for leave to remain in the UK for many years. My source was a Somerset-based chef and volunteer who was appalled that the residents in the hotel have no access to proper cooking facilities.

I was stupefied to hear about this, because that is precisely the problem recently reported by residents and professional and volunteer visitors to the hotel near Exeter Airport which is being run along exactly the same lines. Marooned miles from a shop, with little cash in hand, the residents have been rendered dependant on ready meals driven down the M5 from as far away as Birmingham.

I have heard convincing worries from educational professionals who deal with the children of these families – by basically feeding them at schools with no extra government support – that malnutrition is becoming an evident problem. Malnutrition.

Socially the effect is completely demoralising. Both the Bristol hotel and Exeter hotels have professional kitchens, yet residents are lucky to get access to a microwave. Cooking binds families together as much abroad as it does here.

This time I will get political. Government through the Home Office has turned its back on all of this, leaving private companies, a melange of local authorities and the unfortunate residents to muddle through.

I cannot unhear what I have heard. This is now a major Safeguarding issue, and I’m sending up the distress flare. Action, please, central government. Now. I’m pretty sure volunteers would come forward in their dozens to help supervise access to the kitchens.