James Anderson is a tough, old-fashioned kind of man. But he cries every day when he sees people driven to suicide and despair by the cost of living crisis.
James is the founder of DEPHER (Disabled and Elderly Heating Emergency Repairs) - a charity set up to help people keep their boilers and heating running.
Now, in the face of soaring fuel and food costs, they do much more than that - filling empty fridges and cupboards, paying bills, bailiffs and even buying nappies for those who just can’t afford it.
James and his team are clearly at the sharp end of this crisis - and say it’s only getting worse.
“I cry every day,” he says, “I’ve never seen things this bad.
“One old lady needed a new boiler, we were trying to get one for her, she had no heating or hot water.
“There was a dish of what I thought were sweets on the table. When I looked closely they were tablets.
“She told me she’d been going to take them all, said she couldn’t take anymore and wanted to disappear.
“I arrived at another house to find an 84-year-old lady with a noose around her neck.
“You think, ‘this can’t be happening’ but it is.
“I just went to see a family - the mum rang crying her eyes out because she couldn’t feed her kids, literally.
“This is affecting everyone. But if you’re in poverty we’ll help you, that’s all there is to it.”
Fighting back tears, he adds: “No-one from the government or any public body are coming to help.
“These people get elected promising to do this, that and the other for their communities and they don’t care.
“The government has seen this coming for the last two or three years and done nothing.
“People will be dying this winter.”
As James, 54, explains, things have been getting steadily worse since he set up the charity in 2017.
He was moved to act after meeting an elderly man who’d been scammed by an unscrupulous plumbing firm - and to do something good in memory of his baby son, William.
William was born with a back-to-front heart and underwent surgery in 2013. He and wife, Barbara, 47, had to turn off the machines keeping him alive, when he was just 16 weeks old.
It was a dark time for James but helping others became a way to channel his grief and honour William.
“In 2017 I went to see a gentleman who was disabled and bed bound,” he explains.
“He’d had a firm round and they’d tried to scam him for £5,500.
“I thought about William. The day he died I made a promise to him that I would be the man he would have grown up to be, that I’d make him proud.
“I got the firm to come back and make good what they’d done - I made sure he got a new boiler for free - but I couldn’t sleep. I was up two or three times thinking about all the other people in his position.
“Heating is such an important part of feeling safe and warm but when it goes wrong people just don’t have the funds to put it right and they’re vulnerable to being exploited.
“There was a UN report that said 17,000 people in the UK had died because of the cold - our government wasn’t even acknowledging that.
“I thought, ‘if the government won’t do anything, I will’.”
In 2017 he set up a Community Interest Company, placing ads on social media offering free help for people who needed it.
From heating and plumbing repairs, they now help with everything from food parcels to gas and electric top ups, funeral costs and even bailiff charges.
“People questioned us at first, said, ‘is it real, is it true?’” he explains.
“But it’s got to be done, we’ve got to be human again. If you need us, we’ll be there.”
Since then James, who won a Pride of Manchester Special Recognition award last month has provided £1.2 million of support to people across Burnley where he lives - and now the wider UK.
He ploughs profits from his own company into the charity, topped up by fundraising and a Community Shop.
“If someone pays £2,000 for a boiler, we can put £700 of that back,” he says.
He’s seen things getting even tougher in the last few months - and can’t see where it will end.
“We saw a woman last week. She had nothing,” he says.
“What does it do to a kid when they see their mum not able to feed them, when they know there’s no food? It’s very scary. They don’t know if it’s going to be alright.
“We topped up her gas and electric, got her shopping, filled the fridge. I got the kids sweets and the eight-year-old said, ‘thank you’ then told me he’d thought they were going to die.
“The government need to understand what’s happening, what’s needed, how people are living.”
The Samaritans is available 24/7 if you need to talk. You can contact them for free by calling 116 123, email jo@samaritans.org or head to the website to find your nearest branch. You matter.
