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Oldham Council has quietly rolled out a winter support hub that folds school-closure alerts, gritting updates, and emergency heating help into one place. For parents, it means a single web page will tell them if their child's school is shut before the kettle boils; for older residents, it is the quickest way to find grants for boilers or blankets.

The same page links straight to housing services, so anyone fearing eviction or sleeping rough can, in theory, move from 'help to heat my home' to 'help to keep my home' without hunting through menus. That matters because last winter, homelessness referrals in the borough rose 18 %, and fuel-bill enquiries doubled.

Bin calendars, road-gritting routes, and bus-pass replacements sit alongside, acknowledging that winter hardship is rarely one problem at a time. Council staff say the redesign was triggered by residents calling in cold, then being bounced between departments; the new layout is meant to end the run-around.

Whether it works depends on how quickly people find it. The site went live with no fanfare last week, and no extra money has been attached; existing teams simply rewired the links. If traffic spikes, officers will measure whether fewer people turn up at the civic centre asking for food-voucher codes.