Earlier this year, the BBC published a story on the growing issue of ‘carpet poverty,’ highlighting the fact that much of the UK’s social housing stock currently lacks appropriate flooring.
With no legislation compelling landlords to ensure their properties are fully carpeted, many vulnerable people are living in flats and houses with bare floors that are not only uncomfortable, but unsafe and energy inefficient to boot. As part of its report, the BBC spoke with Andrew Sykes, Chief Officer and Funding & Development Manager of the charity Noah’s Ark Centre, who has recently begun to address rising carpet poverty in his local area of Calderdale through a community interest company called Carpets Like A Boss (CLAB!!!!). This month, we got in touch with Andrew to explore the project in greater depth, discussing how CLAB came about, the significant work it has already carried out in the local area, and the ongoing challenges of funding.
Unseen obstacles
Around 15 years ago, Andrew Sykes retired from a lengthy career in financial services at age 44. Just a few months later though, he could tell something was missing in his life: “People need people, and people need purpose,” he tells The Stocklists. Having run a private company offering financial advice since his teenage years, Andrew felt he was in an ideal position to help people struggling with debt and poverty, particularly as Calderdale has some of the msot deprived areas in the UK. From this impulse, he founded Noah’s Ark Money Advice Service, an organisation which initially provided financial advice but has since expanded to offer budgeting courses, operate a food bank and supply white goods to people lacking basic household items like cookers and fridges.
Even after working with people in poverty for over a decade though, Noah’s Ark rarely visited clients in their own homes, allowing certain types of deprivation to fly under the radar, unnoticed and unaddressed. Then around three years ago, one of the organisation’s service users, Rebecca, moved into social housing after fleeing an abusive household. Shortly after moving in, her young son stubbed his toe on a piece of bare floorboard, sustaining a splinter that ultimately required surgery under anaesthetic at the Bradford Royal Infirmary. Already providing financial and mental health support for Rebecca, Noah’s Ark Centre subsequently took part in a documentary film produced by the regional BBC Look North show, which specifically spotlighted the lack of flooring in the property.
Little did Andrew know, however, this programme would be seen by none other than John Clark, one of the MDs of Mercado, who got in touch with the charity to see if the distributor could be of help. Together with Acts 435, a Christian crowdfunding platform, Noah’s Ark and Mercado decided to initiate a collaborative project in September 2023, and Carpets Like a Boss!!!! was born.
Changing lives
Carpets Like a Boss!!!! has a simple aim: eliminate carpet poverty in Calderdale. It works towards this goal by providing and fitting carpets for families and renters in the local area, totally free of charge. Thus far, 650 houses across Calderdale have been carpeted by the organisation.
Named in line with Andrew’s other spinoff projects from Noah’s Ark – Budget Like a Boss!!!! and Debt Free Like a Boss!!!! – CLAB!!!! was set up as a community interest company (CIC). A CIC is defined by gov.uk as a limited company which operates to provide a benefit to the community it serves. This was done primarily for strategic reasons, Andrew explains. “It means that when I’m applying for grants – and most of our work is funded via grants – I can apply to the same pots of money for both Noah’s Ark and Carpets Like a Boss!!!!.” As we will explore later, the question of funding is an ever-present challenge for charitable organisations like CLAB!!!!, however there is one area the company has never had to worry about, and that’s the supply of carpets themselves.
All of the carpets CLAB!!!! uses to help the residents of Calderdale are provided by Mercado totally free of charge, taken from the distributor’s surplus stock that would otherwise go to landfill or otherwise become waste. This means not only is the charity able to provide flooring, it can offer genuinely high-quality products for the struggling families of Calderdale. “It honestly surprises me how good the stuff Mercado gives us is!” remarks Andrew. And the benefits of this are twofold, at once providing comfort and safety for people who are sadly often without either, while also helping reduce their energy and heating bills by providing much-needed insulation.
This work has literally been lifesaving for several of CLAB!!!!’s clients, such as “Amy” (whose real name has been hidden for her safety and privacy). After escaping an abusive relationship, Amy found a small two-bed flat to move into, however her ex-partner refused her any access to see their two children. She contacted social services, who felt that being able to see their mother was in the children’s best interest, and began the process of facilitating it. When the social workers visited Amy’s flat, however, they highlighted several issues with the property, including the lack of a washing machine, a cooker, or carpets – the latter of which they said represented a serious safety risk for the children.
Faced with the insurmountable financial task of resolving all of these issues before she might be permitted to see her children again, Amy attempted to take her own life. Luckily, she was found by Anna, who runs a foodbank for Noah’s Ark Centre, who called an ambulance and waited with Amy until it arrived. Anna urged her to contact the charity as soon as she was able, and fortunately, she did.
The organisation made a wide range of interventions for Amy, including food support, personal finance advice, free gym membership, as well as providing a brand-new washing machine, cooker, and carpet through CLAB!!!!. With the flat’s major issues now resolved, Amy was able to get back in touch with social services and (at the time of writing) is now finally having regular contact with her children.
In her evaluation, Amy wrote: “I never thought when I was going through my darkest moments that there was a way out for me. You showed me that there is hope for me, that I have a future. I will never forget all of your kindness.”
The endless climb
Despite the obvious importance and massive social value of its work, Carpets Like a Boss!!!! is (like most charitable organisations) in a constant battle to secure enough funding to continue its activities – let alone expand them! When Andrew lays out the figures, the scale of the operation becomes quite daunting indeed. “I now have a full warehouse for the carpet, with a forklift truck and a guy managing it for us, and the rent on that unit is £20,000 a year. And while Mercado provides the carpets to us for free, I’ve spent £70,000 on carpet fitting over the last 12 months because carpet fitters, understandably, won’t fit for free, and shouldn’t be expected to. So I pay them and I pay them fairly for what they do.” Between rent, fitting costs and other sundries, then, CLAB!!!! needs to find around £100,000 each year just to “stand still,” Andrew says.
Enter Acts 435, the Christian crowdfunding platform which initially helped Noah’s Ark and Mercado set up the carpet project. The platform allows users to raise money through local churches and charities like CLAB!!!! in order to provide for the specific needs of individuals experiencing poverty. Speaking with The Stocklists, a representative of Acts 435 said: “We were approached by Mercado in 2023 who offered to provide carpet for individuals and families in this position. Together we are able to provide this resource to our partner churches and charities, who could then raise the funds to fit the carpets on our unique giving website, which is entirely funded by individual donors.
“It is wonderful to see the impact this partnership is having for individuals and families all over the UK, and particularly in Calderdale where Noah’s Ark, and Carpet Like a Boss, has flourished.” In fact, more than half of CLAB’s total fitting costs have been raised by Acts 435 members over the past 12 months, raising over £37,000.
Even despite this display of generosity from the public, though, the organisation still had a lot more expenses to cover over this period, and this is where Andrew needed to be smart. Along with the aforementioned step of registering CLAB!!!! as a CIC, the charity can also applies to the Government’s Household Support Fund because its work massively impacts the energy costs of its clients’ homes (a home without carpets down is between 15-20% more expensive to heat). It usually secures funding from this scheme twice a year, for around £14,000 total, and then additionally CLAB typically gets around £10,000 from the local authority from its emergency fund for individuals escaping domestic abuse situations. Finally, the organisation also receives private independent donations, including a generous recent contribution from Lord Harris of Tapi Carpets, who gave £15,000.
Although this quantity and generosity of funding speaks to the wide support and approval enjoyed by the CLAB project, it also reveals a level of precarity that makes it difficult to predict the future with any certainty. If just one or two of the current sources of funding were to be cut, Andrew may suddenly find himself struggling to pay for fitters or the rent on his warehouse. When we ask him about this, he smiles. “Welcome to the world of the charitable sector. You can come up with the best idea in the world that everybody wants, but unless someone will fund it, you’re not going to make it fly. What we have to do is just work hard to keep on pushing the really positive benefits of the project and just hope that there’s money out there for us, because, the demand is there, and it isn’t going away.”
(Of course, if any readers wish to donate either directly or through Acts 435, we highly encourage you to do so at the website links at the end of this article!)
Long term solutions
Although CLAB!!!! has already changed the lives of over 600 families throughout Calderdale, the overall scale of the problem is far greater than the scope of one charitable organisation, superhuman work ethic or not! With 1.2 million households in Britain currently lacking suitable flooring, Andrew says, the ultimate aim of CLAB!!!! (like any charity) should be to put itself out of business. “Because if there was no debt, if there was no food poverty or carpet poverty, then we wouldn’t need to exist. And that’s how I’ve always run the charity.”
That’s why Andrew has been so keen to work with the media over the past two years, because carpet poverty is an issue much of the general public simply isn’t conscious of. In addition to the BBC Look North programme Noah’s Ark took part in back in 2022, CLAB!!!! has also featured on The One Show, and in the BBC story we mentioned at the top of this profile. This latest article, Andrew tells us, was apparently read 1.4 million times on the day it was published, making it the number one story on the site. By raising significant awareness of the issue, CLAB!!!! hopes to put pressure on the Government to address the issue in a regulatory capacity. For example, Wales’ housing bill legally requires all landlords to put down “suitable flooring”. England is currently going through a revision of its own Housing Act, however this won’t be completed until 2035 at the earliest, Andrew says.
Nevertheless, inspiring stories like Amy’s, along with several other case studies Andrew sent to The Stocklists, illustrate why he’s so keen to keep CLAB!!!! going. As the issue is nationwide, and his organisation is only able to address the problem in Calderdale, he also encourages others to try and set up similar projects for their local areas, particularly as carpet waste is a huge challenge for our industry, and reuse in a charitable context makes for a fantastic CSR win for any companies involved. Make no mistake though, running an organisation like CLAB is no easy feat, requiring not just passion but a truly huge amount of work. “You need people who are motivated and want to make a change,” Andrew says. “I never thought that at nearly 60 I’d be driving a forklift truck!”
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
www.carpetslikeaboss.com
www.noahsarkcentre.org.uk
www.acts435.org.uk
www.mercado.co.uk