STORE CELEBRATES FUNDRAISING SUCCESS

PETS at Home in Southport is celebrating after raising £677 during its recent spring fundraising appeal.  For 2 weeks, the store team worked tirelessly to raise money for local animal rescues in an initiative being run by charity, Support Adoption For Pets.

The money will be donated to local rescue, Woodlands Animal Sanctuary, which is working hard to rescue and re-home abandoned animals in Southport.

Nationally Pets at Home stores raised an impressive £300,500.

Store manager David Salisbury explains:- "As always, our customers have proved incredibly generous and I want to thank them, and my store team, for helping to contribute to our store total as well as to the wider nationwide total. More than £300,000 is a staggering amount to raise and will help animal rescues across the country continue to do such important work."

The store held a number of activities over the course of the appeal including selling raffle tickets and a 'Round up to a £1' initiative, whereby customers could opt to round up the cost of their purchases to a £1, with the difference being donated to the appeal.

Support Adoption For Pets has raised more than £2 million in the past 12 months thanks to the fundraising efforts of store colleagues and customers.

The charity helped more than 450 re-homing and animal welfare organisations in the UK during 2012.

Turn2us responds to benefit cap roll out

WITH the benefits cap rolling out across Britain from today, there will undoubtedly be many people worried about the impact this will have on their lives. As recently as April a Turn2us survey found that a staggering 85% of people were concerned about the changes to the welfare benefit system.

While a simplification of the benefits system on the whole is a welcome move, the results from the cap being trialled in four London boroughs make for worrying reading. 4 out of 5 people affected were lone parents and only 58 of the over 2,000 households did not have dependent children living with them. With the Government estimating that the cap will impact 40,000 households, we're concerned that the most vulnerable are going to be hit even harder.

In addition, the focus on a cap does not solve the main issues which lead to a growing benefit bill, notably a lack of affordable housing, the high cost of living and work that does not pay enough. With the results from the trials hitting lone parents, those in high rent areas and large families hard, the cap may only exacerbate problems.

We urge anyone that is concerned about the cap and how it may affect them to carry out a benefits check on our website. Using our Benefits Calculator we can help people find out if they are to be affected or if someone in their household could receive benefits which would make them exempt. We also have regularly updated information on how the cap works and who will be affected.

As the Benefits Cap makes its way across the country we want to be clear that there is help out there. Turn2us has the knowledge and tools to help those in financial need maximise their income and access the support to make sense of these changes.

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