The pandemic and the cost of living resulted in the council recognising the importance of getting hardship funds to struggling households as quickly and effectively as possible. In response, a ‘cash-first’ approach to grant provision has been adopted which involves the prioritisation of cash grants over in-kind support such as food parcels or shopping vouchers.
About the initiative
The council has found that prioritising cash grants over support such as food parcels can offer more dignity, choice and flexibility for households to address their most pressing financial issues, as well as ultimately delivering greater beneficial impacts both for struggling households as well as injecting funds into the local economy.
During the pandemic and when the severity of COVID-19 related hardship quickly emerged, the council designed and implemented its own new local welfare fund from scratch in the space of two weeks. Cash payments were central to this scheme and funds were paid over several weekly instalments.
Previously, sending cash payments through internal financial process was a challenging process and disbursing funds was time-consuming and complex, this meant it could mean days before customers received much needed funds. Yet, through its adoption of a new innovative cash payment solution called Cash Perks, the council can now send payments instantly to its beneficiaries.
The council first piloted Cash Perks just for those without bank accounts. But its success, in both cutting staff time and costs taken to process payments and reducing the time taken for recipients to receive funds from days to minutes, has seen it become their default payment method for various discretionary fund schemes, including the Household Support Fund.
LBBD staff have now disbursed almost £1 million through the facility that enables staff to either individually or bulk upload payments between £10 and £500 that are sent via SMS texts. The funds are instantly available for the client collection locally at over 17,000 ATMs nationwide using the credentials within the messages, that has seen 97 per cent of payments collected on time.