This week’s belated announcement of yet another temporary extension to the household support fund (HSF) was very welcome. With less than a month on the clock for the existing tranche of Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) funding, local authorities as well as food banks had been desperate for definitive information.
Earlier in the day, a coalition of charities, including the Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN), had begun a day of action calling for an immediate extension of the fund. This followed the news that the central government lifeline would likely continue temporarily through the winter but that any DWP announcement might not come until budget day, a month after the current fund expires.
However, this must surely be the last time that a last-minute, poorly designed ‘sticking plaster’ response to the UK’s ever-deepening poverty crisis can be viewed positively. On Tuesday (3 September), the Trussell Trust released eye-watering statistics on the scale of hardship among the UK’s nearly seven million universal credit claimants. Nearly half of this cohort ran out of food over the previous month and didn’t have enough money to buy more. Meanwhile 1.6 million universal credit claimants were forced to use a food bank over the last year. It’s clear that six months of funding worth £421 million, alongside £79 million for the devolved nations, is a drop in the ocean.
The new Labour government has already taken some positive steps to reduce the hardship resulting from austerity policies including the establishment of a child poverty taskforce (although the removal of the two-child limit remains elusive). With timely and unrestrictive DWP guidance, the much-needed reprieve for the HSF will undoubtedly help local authorities to deliver temporary crisis support, bolster local advice services, provide support in the holidays for children in receipt of free school meals, and inevitably boost the help provided by overstretched food banks through a challenging winter.
But what of the people who can’t access support because they can’t meet sometimes unfathomable local authority eligibility criteria, or who find local authority application systems impenetrable, or feel too ashamed to seek out help? The £421m distributed to English councils isn’t going to help people suffering in silence who are unable to pay their bills, are going hungry and are having to leave the heating off over the winter months.
- End to household support fund will mean ‘more people will go cold, hungry and lose their homes’
- ‘It’s a lifeline’: MPs urge government to help families in crisis and continue household support fund
What of the pensioners who are facing the removal of the winter fuel payment because they haven’t claimed pension credit or don’t know they are eligible or who aren’t quite poor enough for this benefit’s threshold? And what of sick and disabled people who cannot work and are being pushed into destitution by a threadbare social security system that ignores their plight? The new government makes no secret of prioritising working households, yet the Trussell Trust’s research finds that no less than 68% of working households on universal credit have gone without essentials in the last six months.