New Crisis Resilience Fund – our response

Every day, food banks like ours see how people living on the lowest incomes can be quickly tipped into crisis by an unexpected cost or financial shock such as illness or a job loss. Effective local crisis support is crucial to prevent people from falling into severe hardship, and to enable them to still afford the essentials we all need.

Since April this year, the Crisis Resilience Fund (CRF) has replaced the Household Support Fund in England. Both are funded by the UK government.

Since 1 July 2026 in Wandsworth, the Crisis Resilience Fund replaces the Discretionary Social Fund (community care grant, supermarket and prepayment fuel vouchers) and Discretionary Housing Payments. Wandsworth’s CRF allocation for 26/27 is £3.8million.

The primary objective of the Crisis Resilience Fund is to:

‘both provide a safety net for those on low incomes who encounter a financial shock and to invest in building local financial resilience to enable individuals and communities to better deal with crises in the long-term, reducing crisis need.’

In a positive shift towards a longer-term approach, the CRF provides a welcome three years of guaranteed funding for local authorities like Wandsworth Council to support people who may otherwise need to turn to a food bank.

The CRF is deliberately flexible and can cover a wide range of essentials, including food, water, energy, hygiene products, housing costs, clothing, furniture and appliances, transport and digital connectivity [Policy in Practice].

It can provide Crisis Payments (cash transfers, vouchers or goods) and Housing Payments for residents on low incomes who can’t afford essential costs like rent, essential white goods, food and energy costs. These are grants not loans, so people won’t need to pay them back.

Locally, Wandsworth Council states that CRF payments are designed to help someone facing a financial emergency that needs immediate action to prevent serious hardship. It lists the following examples of what people may not have enough money for:

• Food
• Heating or energy
• Water
• Accommodation (eg rent)
• Essential household items, such as furniture or appliances (eg cooker, fridge/freezer)

The government guidance (point 22) has a longer list of what local authorities are able to use CRF funding to help people with, which we hope will be helpful to share here:

• food
• water including for drinking, washing, cooking, as well as for sanitary purposes and sewerage
• housing costs
• period and hygiene products such as soap and toothpaste
• energy for any form of fuel that is used for the purpose of domestic heating, cooking or lighting, including oil or portable gas cylinders. This includes help for those who are facing immediate financial hardship because of significant increases in energy costs, such as a large increase in heating oil prices
• clothing including uniform, warm winter clothing and shoes
• essential furniture and appliances such as beds and bedding, washing machines, window coverings and carpets, fridge-freezers and ovens
• essential transport-related costs such as repairing a car, buying a bicycle or bus pass or paying for fuel
• digital and connectivity essentials such as broadband or phone bills.

As well as making improvements to local crisis support, local authorities are required to use some of their CRF allocation to fund and enhance services that help build individual financial resilience, including local advice services.

Crucially, local authorities are encouraged to use the CRF to ensure people receive preventative advice and support before they reach crisis point – which we welcome, and look forward to seeing how Wandsworth Council achieves this in the coming months.

In summary:

‘CRF schemes must be person centred, needs based, holistic, trauma informed and based on a “no wrong door” approach. In practice, this means people should not be turned away because they came through the wrong route, struggled with digital access or were unable to explain their situation clearly. The system should work for people in crisis, not against them [Policy in Practice].

Holiday supermarket vouchers and school uniform

Since the pandemic (when the Household Support Fund began), many local authorities including Wandsworth Council used a large portion of their Household Support Fund allocation to provide holiday supermarket vouchers for all local families whose children received income-related free school meals – and we recognise the sudden stopping of this provision is a worry for many local families.

However the new UK government Crisis Resilience Fund guidance – while not banning the blanket provision of holiday vouchers – states that ‘some Free School Meal eligible families may not routinely need crisis support during every school holiday’. Instead the guidance points to a more person-centred and targeted approach: that local authorities ‘should consider how best to support the poorest and most in need households’ (points 44-46 of guidance).

We are glad that the UK government’s lifting of the two-child limit to social security will provide more financial support for many local families this summer. Across Wandsworth Borough, 6,690 children were affected by the two-child limit, and we have already talked to local families who do not need to use the food bank anymore because they are receiving more adequate social security payments for their whole family – good news. (The two-child limit was introduced by the UK government in 2017 and was evidenced to have pulled many children into poverty.)

However some local families with children will still struggle this summer – particularly if they are affected by the benefit cap and therefore may not see any extra income as a result of the changes to the two-child limit policy.

We’ve also recently met several families at the food bank who are worried about how they will pay for new school uniform for children this September – particularly children going into secondary school at Y7 – after Wandsworth Council stopped its valuable school uniform grant scheme for low income families this month.

Please help spread the word that any local family on a low income who is struggling to afford food and essentials this summer can consider applying for a Crisis Payment from Wandsworth Council.

CRF guidance clearly enables local authorities to provide Crisis Payments to help people with clothing and shoes, including uniform costs (ie ‘clothing including uniform, warm winter clothing and shoes’, point 22 CRF guidance).

We hope that this new Crisis Resilience Fund will be used really well by Wandsworth Council to support local people and families facing hardship, and to provide advice and support to prevent hardship and help everyone have enough income for the essentials, like food. We look forward, with the community and voluntary sector, to working with Wandsworth Council to make their CRF as good as it possibly can be.

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