"£500m in new grants to help poorest households"

[dutchman]

The government has announced £500m of grants to help families struggling with the cost of living as other support schemes are withdrawn



The move comes as rising prices, including spiralling energy bills, are making it harder for those on low incomes to make ends meet.

The end of furlough and the £20 weekly top-up to universal credit will also remove support provided during Covid.

The new fund will help households pay for essentials like food and bills.

Local councils in England will distribute small grants to support millions of households, the government said.

The cash will be made available in October. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will receive up to £79m of the £500m.

Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey said that the government had helped millions of people over the pandemic.

"Many are now back on their feet but we know that some may still need further support. Our targeted Household Support Fund is here to help those vulnerable households with essential costs as we push through the last stages of our recovery from the pandemic."

The fund replaces the Covid-19 local support grant programme, which was designed to support those most in need across England with the cost of food, energy (heating, cooking, lighting), water bills (including sewerage) and other daily needs.

The new fund will run over winter and those in need of support should contact their local council, the government said.

Households struggling with the cost of food, heating, water and other essentials will be eligible for support.

The government said the fund will bolster support from the Warm Home Discount which gives a £140 rebate on energy bills each winter to more than 2.2 million low-income households and the Cold Weather Payment which provides £25 extra a week for poorer households when the temperature is consistently below zero.

[dutchman]

Call me cynical but in my experience schemes like these seldom help those "most" in need.

[dutchman]

Pensioners and children are being forced to fight over the crumbs from Rishi Sunak’s table



When Rishi Sunak unveiled his mini-Budget just over a week ago, he declared he wanted to “do more to help our most vulnerable households with rising costs”. And although his priority was people in work, he did find £500m in new money for those not in work or on a pension.

The vehicle for this extra help was the Household Support Fund, an emergency pot of cash administered by councils to help meet the cost of basics like food, energy, water and clothing.

First unveiled by the Chancellor last September to “provide a lifeline for those at risk of struggling to keep up with their bills over the winter”, the original £500m scheme was due to run for six months and end today.

Sunak’s Spring Statement extended the initiative for another six months, with a further £500m. Sunak said he was “doubling” the fund, though in fact he was just extending and repeating it. I’m told that demand has been so huge from people hit by huge bill rises that virtually all the money allocated last year has been spent already.

But what councils have been waiting for is the eligibility criteria for the extended fund. Well, overnight, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) quietly updated the guidance – and it makes for interesting reading because it has changed.

The scheme that ran from October to today specified that 50 per cent of the money was ring-fenced for “households with children” and 50 per cent could go to everyone else. The new guidance states that a third of the money has to go on households with children, a third “will be dedicated to pensioners” and a third to everyone else.

The switch feels very much like an admission that pensioners got nothing new elsewhere in the mini-Budget (and in fact face a real-terms cut in the state pension). Clearly spooked by the backlash, the Government is effectively allocating an extra £166m explicitly to help the poorest older people across the UK.

At the same time, however, the proportion of the fund payable to families with kids has gone down by 17 per cent. So although those who relied on this emergency money will get it for another six months, they will get less than they have to date.

Because the Treasury hasn’t increased the overall pot size, it’s effectively pitting pensioners against young children – when both groups include very vulnerable people. It feels like a new twist on the idea of an equal opportunities Government: giving the youngest and the oldest an equally bad deal.

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Jonathan Ashworth told me: “Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul. Rishi Sunak just imposed the biggest real-terms cut to the pension in 50 years and now he’s telling pensioners struggling to survive to go cap in hand to this fund while squeezing help for families and children in poverty.”

One problem with the Household Support Fund is that different councils have different ways of administering it. Some of them require direct applications from individuals, others need a referral from support workers or bodies like Citizens Advice. Age UK points to the “postcode lottery” of the varying approaches.

Many poorer people are either unaware of the help on offer or if they are may not relish the process of form filling to prove they are in need – especially when they have already gone through such a process to qualify for other benefits. Older people are often too proud to ask for help too. There’s the added problem that often councils hand out food vouchers rather than cash, with all the stigma that implies in the shops.

Of course, there are two much simpler ways to get money directly to the most vulnerable: Universal Credit itself and the state pension. No vouchers, no extra red tape, no stigma. Universal Credit is meant to be the Conservatives’ flagship welfare achievement, yet it is not being used for the cost of living crisis.

The real reason is of course cost. Sunak made plain that his “priority is to use every marginal pound we have to cut taxes”. But offering the most vulnerable people crumbs from the Treasury table, and then expecting pensioners and children to fight over those crumbs, isn’t a great look for a government elected on a “One Nation” manifesto.

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/the-household-support-fund-is-forcing-pensioners-and-children-to-fight-over-crumbs-1549875?ico=best_of_opinion

[dutchman]

In fairness to Coventry City Council they sent mine automatically without any requirement on my part to apply for it. I would have preferred though they had sent me 6x£6 vouchers rather than one £36 voucher which I am struggling to use. Just how much do they think a pensioner spends on food every week?

Likewise for those with families to feed it would make more sense to spread the vouchers over six months than to send it all in one go. I dread to think what some of them will use the vouchers for?

[dutchman]

Vulnerable people struggle to access UK household support fund



Vulnerable people are struggling to access food vouchers and cash grants introduced under a government scheme to help with the cost of living crisis.

The £1bn household support fund (HSF) has been beset by problems, with councils stuck trying to figure out workable payment methods to help those in acute need of financial support.

Ministers launched the HSF last autumn, initially pledging £500m and instructing local councils to distribute the money among poorer households in order to help with food, clothing and utility costs. The fund was later doubled in May and extended until the end of September.

David, 31, a social worker from Liverpool, is one of a number of people who told the Guardian Community of their experience of applying for the small government cash grants.

In February, David received a £60 grant from his council for gas and electricity in the form of a paper voucher and the instruction to redeem it at a shop with a PayPoint.

“I was unable to cash this in, despite visiting over 10 local PayPoint registered shops, all independent corner shops,” he said. “I was told to come back later, that the manager needed to authorise it, that the ‘system’ was down, I got a wide variety of excuses.

“In the end I threw the voucher away. It was incredibly frustrating.”

Nicola, who lives in the borough of Westminster and is on universal credit due to chronic illness, successfully accessed two HSF grants herself worth £150 each, and has helped various other people from her local constituency of Westminster north navigate what appears to be a Kafkaesque application and redemption process she described as “a nightmare”.

“The government has come up with this convoluted, chaotic system by giving the money to local authorities, which eat into the fund, then individually disseminate the money in different ways as they see fit. It’s a total postcode lottery,” she said.

“In Westminster borough, you have to apply to the Citizens Advice Bureau for household support fund vouchers. During the first cycle, the application process was cumbersome, but you could self-refer and even apply without a national insurance number. By the second round, it had got completely bogged down in administrative hurdles. Now, there isn’t even a form to fill in, you have to phone Citizens Advice or be referred by a food bank or charity.”

Nicola spent hours on the phone calling advice hotlines to apply for cash vouchers she and people from about 20 households she was assisting were entitled to. “You have to jump through so many hoops and you’re exhausting yourself to get these tiny payments because you’re desperate. It took eight or nine weeks to get the vouchers,” she said.

But problems did not stop there. “Westminster borough only issues Sainsbury’s vouchers, which do not help with electricity or gas bills, and you can’t buy infant formula,” she said.

She added: “Then there were lots of cases where Sainsbury’s staff didn’t recognise the vouchers people brought into stores, and some people just don’t have the social capital to argue their case.

“These many layers of bureaucracy – it’s ideological, to make it harder for people.”

[rebbonk]

Why I don't read the pretentious Guardian...

... people just don’t have the social capital to argue ...