Questions relate to the Household Support Fund:

1. How much was the council allocated as part of the original Household Support Fund (intended to run from October 2021 to March 2022)
The Council was allocated £525,573.35

2. How much of this funding have you used so far (until March 25thth 2022)?
The Council had used all of the funding available by the end of March 2022.

3. Before new funding was announced on March 23rd 2022 as part of the Spring Statement, had you run out of funding for the scheme?
See above – at this time we were in the process of ensuring that all funding allocated would be distributed. We had stopped receiving new applications after the first week of March to ensure that all funding could be distributed before the end of March cut-off date.

4. If so, when did this happen?
Not applicable

5. How is the funding being disseminated? E.g. in the form of grants, vouchers, given to other organisations, or put towards council schemes
The funding has been distributed in two main ways:
Firstly, to families with children eligible for free school meals to cover food costs over the holiday periods – issued with food vouchers. This accounted for £247,750 of the funding available.
Secondly, distributed via a range of voluntary sector organisations following a triage process by Citizen’s Advice Wokingham (CAW) through a ‘One Front Door’ approach (including referrals from Council services). This had a particular, although not exclusive, focus on support with energy costs. This accounted for £233,376.
(The remaining funds covered administrative costs, primarily of the voluntary sector partners involved)

6. What is the eligibility criteria for the receiving the above?
Self-evident with regard to families with children eligible for free school meals.
For those accessing through CAW eligibility was determined by demonstrable need in accordance with CAW’s usual assessment methodology. Size of payment linked to household size with some flexibility to meet individual circumstances. Repeat monthly payments were permissible subject to meeting criteria for accessing other forms of support, e.g. debt advice which couldn’t be funded from this funding source.

7. If you are taking applications from individuals, e.g. for grants, vouchers and/or payments via the scheme, how many applications have you received up until today (March 25th 2022)?
A total of 1,727 awards were made through the distribution of funding via the voluntary sector.

8. How many of these have been:
a) Accepted?
b) Rejected?
c) Yet to be processed?
We do not have a record of those ‘rejected’ as anyone ineligible for direct support from the HSF was signposted to other sources of help either through CAW or other voluntary agencies such as the food bank.

9. What is the average value of grants/vouchers/payments that have been awarded?
Across the totality of funding distributed the average award was approximately £38. This does of course mask a significant variation. If only the funding distributed via the voluntary sector is considered then the average for this element of the funding was approximately £135.