Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to provide longer-term support for local services via the Household Support Fund.

This Government is committed to a sustainable, long-term approach to drive up opportunity and drive down poverty across the UK.

That is why we are providing £742 million in England to extend the Household Support Fund (HSF) by a further year, from 1 April 2025 until 31 March 2026. This will enable Local Authorities to continue to provide vulnerable households with immediate crisis support towards the cost of essentials, and develop their schemes to help prevent poverty locally and build local resilience.

To support Local Authorities, we have clarified what is meant by both crisis and preventative support, updating the schemes’ objectives to include both types of support, and providing definitions and examples of each eligible spend category in the guidance.

We encourage Local Authorities to consider how their provision of crisis support could have a longer-term, sustainable impact, and to offer some level of preventative support to stop vulnerable households from falling into, or falling further into, crisis.