Warm Welcome Campaign

The Warm Welcome Campaign began during the worst cost-of-living crisis for 75 years, when Gordon Brown and faith leaders came together to see what could be done to support millions of people who were having to choose between heating and eating. The scale of the problem was huge - with 14.4 million people living in poverty and 7% experiencing chronic loneliness. We were worried that the coming winter would see poverty and loneliness rise to terrible new heights.

We needed a rapid and practical response, both to provide physical warmth and to address isolation and loneliness. Our solution was to create a national umbrella under which faith groups, libraries and local community spaces could be resourced to open up their doors and offer warmth and welcome to those struggling to heat their homes. It was a huge logistical challenge to mobilise everything at pace and offer a timely solution, but through our national network of partners we created the Warm Welcome Campaign and saw thousands of grass roots organisations registering to provide warmth and welcome. In our first winter these Warm Welcome Spaces hosted over 2.5 million visits, and since then the campaign has gone from strength to strength.