5 Financial Inclusion (Fergus Walker) PDF 468 KB
:
Minutes:
A written update from Fergus Walker was noted by the Committee.
:
4 Financial Inclusion (Fergus Walker) PDF 548 KB
:
Minutes:
Fergus Walker provided a verbal update to his at the meeting. This included:
-
Scottish Welfare Fund. From 1 April to 31 May 2023, £79k has been
provided against £458k funding available for the year.
-
Discretionary Housing Payment. Up to 31 May 2023, £751k has been spent,
with funds remaining from the initial tranche 1 funding of £869k. Fergus
expects to receive a further £192k from the Scottish government in tranche 2.
This total £1.06m allocation will be split between mitigating the effects of
the bedroom tax and those facing rent hardship due to benefit cap issues with
ongoing work to maximise take up of these funds.
-
Flexible Food Fund. Up to 31 March, 1800 households facing food and fuel
insecurity in ·¬ÇÑÊÓƵapp had benefitted from this fund with an average
client gain of £1400 per household. £204k has been granted from the Shared
Prosperity Funding that will allow the project to continue to 2025. Fergus
advised the Flexible Food Fund has won a second national award from Assist FM Community
Focus Awards (the management body for Facilities Management professionals) and
has been featured as a case study by the Scottish Government under the National
Action Plan.
-
School Clothing Project. This is live in BC, OLI and Kintyre and is
being introduced to Mid-Argyll and the Isles. There is now a live
website for this project.
Fergus said this has been a great piece of work with community groups and there
is more to do and he and Rona are discussing how the Community Development
Officers can support this further by the end of Summer 2023.
-
Scotland Loves Local cards. These have been given out to qualifying
households in the area in receipt of council tax reduction. Funding for this
was issued by the Scottish Government as part of the Local Authority Covid Economic
Recovery and Islands Fund. He was unable to report on the activation rate and
spend on these cards currently, but hopes to have that information by the end
of June when he can circulate that to partners.
ACTION - Fergus Walker to provide
information on activation and spend on Love Local cards to cppadmin to
circulate to partners.
-
£197k funding for islands has been used to trial a top up to the free
school meal allowance by £1.60 in secondary schools and also used to support
food banks on islands.Ìý
Fergus is looking to further enhance their data matching to better
identify communities in particular need. He currently uses council tax
reduction and arrears data in conjunction with information from the Scottish
Welfare Fund Crisis Grants to do this, however, some of this data belongs to
DWP and they may tighten up on the use of that data. Fergus will assess the
impact of this once more guidance is available from DWP.
An exciting 2 year project is about to start in partnership with the
Poverty Alliance and the Third Sector to evidence local and national factors
that affect poverty. Fergus is keen to get the data from this project on the
experience of those living in poverty in rural Scotland and how we can use that
data to mitigate poverty, via ·¬ÇÑÊÓƵapp changes, in ·¬ÇÑÊÓƵapp. Takki advised
that he had been contacted by the Poverty Alliance to assist in the recruitment
of a Development Manager for this project that will map current efforts, build
network capacity and concentrate on areas in most need.
ACTION - Fergus Walker to share the
details of the project with the Poverty Alliance once available, via the
Community Planning team.
Joe thanked Fergus and his team for the great work they are doing to
support those in need across our area.
David noted that recent figures had shown a rise in child poverty in
·¬ÇÑÊÓƵapp, but that rise was not as bad as other areas. He agreed there
was a phenomenal amount of existing work to mitigate child poverty. He added
that as the figures are post code based, this can affect the results for our
rural and island communities where a single post code can contain extremes at
both end of the wealth spectrum.
Ryan asked what promotion there is currently for the available funds.
Fergus advised that they are all promoted across social media, the Council
webpage, via Bute advice centre and AliEnergy and press releases. Lucy also
noted that the funds are promoted via the CPP Bulletin that is sent regularly
to all partners.
: