Decision

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