Awards bill ‘would save our Golden Oldies Senior Citizens and Disabled Group lunch club’

Published: 8th April, 2011
by PAVAN AMARA

PENSIONERS who say their lives will be destroyed by the loss of their lunch club have branded as a “disgrace” a council jamboree that cost £2,000.

The Lib Dems have also condemned the Labour-controlled council for spending £40,000 on new carpets and furniture while hundreds of small groups lose out because of swingeing spending cuts.

The Golden Oldies Senior Citizens and Disabled Group on the Mayville estate in Mildmay is to lose its £1,639 annual grant from Islington Primary Care Trust. The group has been told it is not “eligible” to apply for council grants due to its size and the number of similar groups in the area.

The Town Hall has advised the pensioners to apply to become a business which receives council cash, but they can only do this online and none of the members is able to use computers. Nor do they want to become a business.

They are furious at £2,000 – enough to pay for the group – being spent by the council on sending ten senior officers to a swanky awards ceremony at the five-star Grosvenor House Hotel in Mayfair.

The Golden Oldies group provides pensioners’ lunches three times a week, enabling them to socialise, as well as visiting them when they are sick and offering a benefits advice service.

Chairwoman Anne Robinson said: “It’s a paltry sum of money we’re asking for, and some of these council executives – what warrants them to earn what they do? For some, £1,639 is a smaller amount than they earn in a week, but for us, that’s life-changing money. 

“We provide a lifeline for the pensioners. If they didn’t come here, they would wither away in their flats. Nobody would be there to care for them because a lot of them have been left without family.  

“We lived through the war. Yet now we are not useful any more we find ourselves on the scrap­heap.”

Labour has been landed with cuts of £100million by the government yet the Lib Dems said yesterday (Thursday) that the Town Hall had recently spent £34,000 on new furniture for offices and £5,000 on a new red carpet outside the council chamber because it had become a “trip hazard” for councillors.

Lib Dem group leader Councillor Terry Stacy said: “When times are as hard as they are, should Islington council taxpayers be funding these jollies at five-star hotels?”

When the Tribune contacted the Town Hall about the Golden Oldies’ plight local Labour councillor Kate Groucett vowed to help. 

“I’m happy to step in to get some money to the pensioners from our ward development fund to get them through this year so they can find some longer-term funding,” she said.

A spokesperson for Islington Council said: “We spent money on the red carpet because it was threadbare in parts. 

“The Town Hall is host to 1,000 weddings and civil partnerships a year, and these bring in money for council services. The Town Hall needs to reflect that, so it can bring in more money.”