Cost of living crisis: The Star's open letter to new Prime Minister calling for action to protect Sheffield

The cost of living crisis is the biggest challenge that any PM has faced in a generation and today we urge Liz Truss to take radical action to ensure people can heat their homes and feed their families in the looming winter.

Dear Prime Minister,

Sheffield needs urgent help to prevent a cost-of-living catastrophe in our city.

Businesses will fold, many people will go cold, hungry or both and some will die unless you, Ms Truss, take radical action immediately.

Spiralling energy prices are already hitting the poorest in Sheffield hardest. It is a scandal that prepayment meters, used by many on low incomes, come with higher energy costs under the price cap. It can’t be right that someone on a prepayment meter is charged more than anyone else to boil a kettle or put on their heating.

So today, we are joining forces with our sister titles in cities up and down the UK to demand urgent help for both households and businesses.

Soaring energy bills and eye-watering inflation not only threaten every family in the land but pose a life and death challenge to many of our smallest businesses and pubs too - on whom our communities and many of our jobs depend.So today, The Star spells out some key changes that should top your ‘To Do’ list.

Stop the cost of energy from going above double the levels seen last winter, for both households and businesses;Help those on prepayment meters so they are no longer facing higher energy prices; Tell energy companies that they cannot cut off the supply to any homes this winter if people fall behind on their bills.

A failure to move swiftly and decisively in all these areas will not merely be a lost opportunity - it could cost thousands of lives and cause untold hardship this winter.

Sheffield is a gritty, northern city, we have weathered storms before – the closure of coal mines and steelworks just two of those we overcome – but what we are facing now is unprecedented.

The cost of living crisis we are now facing affects every single one of us.

Many of us simply do not know how we will make ends meet...how we will feed our families, heat our homes and businesses, pay for school meals for our children.

Some firms don’t know how they will pay their staff or even survive if nothing changes.

Sheffield has made the most if its past and its global reputation for steel and manufacturing and has reinvented itself, we have one of the best shopping centres in the UK, students flock to the city’s two universities, we have become a destination city for weekend breaks and we are the city of sport.

Prime Minister, we urge you to do all you can to protect Sheffield before it is too late and all we have achieved in this great city to be undone.