Content

RESOLVED
 
KEY DECISION
 
That the
Executive endorsed the Regulation 11 Notice for the delivery of the
Household Support Fund Extension, which:
 

a)   
Approved the extension of contracts for staff employed in the
Household Support Fund team to ensure delivery of the proposal as
set out in Section 4 Report Background.
 

b)   
Approved the proposal to provide:

                          
i.      
Children’s Holiday Food Support

                        
ii.      
Back to School Essentials Support

                       
iii.      
Provision of financial support for food and wider essential
living costs
 
In addition to
this, the Executive:

 

a)   
Delegated authority to the Executive Member for Adults,
Health and Wellbeing in consultation with the Director of Public
Health to redistribute any funds that have not been assigned or
committed to by 30 September 2024, to local Food Banks to provide
them with an additional source of income.
 
 
Reasons for
Recommendations:
 

a)   
The proposal in Table 2, Section 5 Issues and Choices, sets a
clear approach for how the funds will be used to mitigate the
impact on residents who have previously received holiday support
for children eligible for Free School Meals.
 

b)   
Cessation of holiday support will be aligned with the start
of the new academic year given the uncertainty of ongoing
iterations of the Household Support Fund, making it clearer for
residents to understand the timings of ongoing support coming to a
natural end.
 

c)   
Holiday support is aligned with the previous support provided
by the Council through the previous iterations of the Household
Support Fund.
 

d)   
By the provision of vouchers rather than cash to support with
food and essential costs via an online application and eligibility
assessment process reduces the risk of fraud and duplicate
claims.
 

e)   
Current frameworks, processes, eligibility criteria and
online application forms can be used with some minor modifications
to achieve the recommendations in Table 2, Section 5 Issues and
Choices, ensuring support is delivered in accordance with the time
restrictions for the fund to end of September 2024.
 
Alternative Options
Considered:
 

Delivery Model

Implications

Rationale

Option 1
Funds not claimed from DWP

This would mean no further support
is provided beyond March 2024

Reputational risk for the Council
for not supporting vulnerable and low-income households.

Option 2
Implement same operational delivery
model as HSF4

The HSF4 delivery model supported
households with the costs of food, wider essentials, fuel and
advice services.  This option would see the funds
distributed in the same delivery model.
Guidance to local authorities state
limited funds should be allocated to advice services.
 

The cost of energy is reducing
during the spring / summer period.
Funding for advice services was
provided through the Grant programme through HSF4, so is not felt
necessary or proportionate in terms of adding best value for money
in supporting residents during the extension period with the cost
of fuel and advice services.
With the majority of the spend (85%)
being allocated to holiday support it would mean significantly
fewer households being supported with fuel costs and/or funding
being passported to the VCSE.

Option 3
Allocate funding to holiday support for
children eligible for free school meals for May and Summer
2024.
 

This would mean that no additional
financial support was provided to residents.
This would increase expectation for
funding to continue beyond the current academic year for holiday
support for those eligible.

An online portal would still need to
be developed to provide non-financial support, i.e. referring to
the VCSE sector for additional support and
advice.  Without this online portal, the HSFE
monies would not be available to the Council.

Option 4
Allocate partial funding to
holiday support for children eligible for free school meals for the
May and Summer 2024.
 
Allocate partial funding to VCSE
Partners or NNC to issue supermarket vouchers directly to
residents

Negotiating an agreed eligibility
criteria with VSCE Partners would be challenging without full
understanding of their individual processes.
 

The guidance states that the Local
Authority is ultimately responsible for the eligibility criteria,
and could create challenging negotiations with VSCE Partners, and
given the time constraint of the programme this is not
feasible.
There is the risk of an inconsistent
outcome for a household applying to one VCSE partner versus
another.
There is an increased risk of
duplicate funding for households seeking support from more than one
VCSE Partner with little mitigation in place to overcome this in
the VCSE sector.
An online portal would still need to
be developed to provide non-financial support, i.e. referring to
the VCSE sector for additional support and
advice.  Without this online portal, the HSFE
monies would not be available to the Council.
This option would also require
completely new frameworks, processes and online forms which carries
a high risk of the service only being available to residents for a
short period