COUNCILS across the country are opening hundreds of “warm banks” for pensioners and other vulnerable people who cannot afford to heat their homes.

Public buildings, including libraries and community centres, are being equipped to take in vulnerable people and provide them with hot drinks, food and activities.

Councils opening warm banks include Birmingham, North Somerset, Southend, Doncaster, Greater Manchester, Norfolk, Coventry, Powys, Wirral, Bristol, Bradford, Leeds and Dundee.

Pensioners’ leaders fear a repeat of last winter’s increase in the number of excess winter deaths, with many facing unprecedented threats to their health amid the cost-of-living crisis.

The Office for National Statistics recorded a six-fold increase in excess winter deaths last winter — 63,000 compared to 10,320 in winter 2020/21.

Many of the excess deaths were attributed to cold-related illnesses including pneumonia.

Jan Shortt, general secretary of Britain’s biggest pensioners’ organisation, the National Pensioners’ Convention (NPC), said that the need for warm banks “shows just how seriously the economic crisis is impacting on our oldest and most vulnerable.”

She said: “The NPC fears that the public really do not understand the unprecedented scale of the threat posed not only to older, vulnerable people but also to our families.

“The opening of dozens of these warm banks by local councils also shows how inadequate the government’s response has been. 

“It is a sorry situation when it falls to councils — who are still struggling to run services through massive government-imposed funding cuts — to help the most vulnerable within their communities, while the government’s main goal is how to boost the incomes of the wealthiest.”