Crisis and Resilience Fund - crisis payments (Welfare Support Team)

Local welfare provision, including the new Crisis and Resilience Fund, is funding managed by local authorities to help families under exceptional pressure.

If you’re struggling to meet your most essential living costs, including food, energy costs and other essential bills, please see the details on how to apply for support below.

Crisis payments are intended to meet occasional or short-term needs and cannot be used to give someone an alternative source of regular income.

Crisis payments offer support to low-income households who have experienced financial shock. A financial shock is a sudden, unexpected expense or drop in income, that can place pressure on someone’s budget and wellbeing.

An award can provide timely support to help someone manage their situation and avoid them from falling into crisis or prevent a crisis from getting worse.

Crisis payments eligibility

When considering a crisis payment application, we'll define low income as a household whose income doesn't cover their essential expenditure costs.

Where a household contain other adults, we'll expect them to contribute towards household costs.  

We'll take a person-centred approach to establishing eligibility. Examples of a crisis situation where we might be able to help will be linked to some sort of financial shock.

For example (this list is not exhaustive):

  • A reduction in regular income (redundancy, significant change in working pattern)
  • An unexpected sudden reduction in benefits
  • A car breaking down or a bus route being cut (or some other transport change)
  • An essential item or household appliance breaking down (boiler, medical equipment or white goods)
  • A disaster, such as fire, flood, gas explosion, chemical leak, landslip etc
  • An accident, health emergency, mental health crisis leading to additional unplanned expenditure
  • Domestic abuse resulting in additional expenditure

Please note that we may ask to see proof of the above.

In general, we're unable to help people who have no recourse to public funds. However, there are some exceptions. If you're unsure, please contact us on 0345 678 9078, selecting option 1.

Examples of what we may be able to help with (this list is not exhaustive):

  • Food 
  • Water including for drinking, washing, cooking, as well as for sanitary purposes and sewerage 
  • Housing costs 
    • Including rent in advance, deposits, rent arrears (you’ll need to have applied to CRF Housing Payments in the first instance and, if you have one, spoken to your homelessness officer about applying to Homeless Prevention Fund)
  • 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
  • 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
  • Other essential bills

How to apply

If you believe you're eligible, and require support, you can call us on 0345 678 9078 (and select option 2) between the following times:

  • 8.45am and 5pm on a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
  • or between 10am and 5pm on a Wednesday, to make an application

We'll gather some basic information from you about your circumstances (including your household, your income and savings) and will ask you what help you need.

We’ll also ask you to send in your most recent bank transaction statements for each account you hold. This helps us to prove your identity, understand what essential costs you are struggling to pay for and why, and to signpost you to support that may be available to you. If you don’t provide this information, your application will be closed as incomplete.

If you are unable to phone, and don't have anyone who can help you to do this, please email us on localsupport@shropshire.gov.uk and we can discuss options regarding how to apply.

What happens once you have made your application?

We use a person-centred approach. This means we'll consider your individual circumstances to identify your needs. 

We may ask you to provide a budget sheet to establish whether you need help. If you ask us, we can provide you with a budget sheet. Alternatively, you may prefer to use this budget planner from Money Helper.

We'll also consider what money you have available to you. For this purpose, you'll need to provide your most recent bank statement for each account you and your partner (if you have one) have, whether your account is in credit or debit. This also includes savings accounts. This proof should be up to the current date that you make your application if possible. If you have other accounts, such as ISAs, we may need to see proof of those too.

Please note in some circumstances, we may ask for bank proof for other members of the household where we would expect them to contribute towards the cost of the item(s) being requested.

We may ask for other evidence, depending on your circumstances and the item(s) you are requesting.

Once we’re received the evidence we asked you to provide when you made your application, a specialist adviser will contact you to gather more information. They may ask you for other information or evidence, depending on your circumstances. If you’ve applied to us before, we may ask you to provide a budget form showing all the money you have coming in and the money you must pay out.

We'll take your individual circumstances into account when looking at your application. If you have a support worker, it can be really helpful to ask them to give us a letter or email confirming your situation, as they can sometimes provide us with more background information to support your application. This can help us to understand your situation more fully.

How do we make our awards?

If we decide to make an award, it will depend on the type of award you need and how urgently you need the help. We'll discuss this with you when dealing with your application. We'll notify you of our decision, and if we are unable to make an award, we'll explain why.

Right to ask for a review

Local welfare provision schemes, including crisis payments are discretionary, and as such there is no right of appeal to a Social Security Tribunal. 

You can ask us to conduct an internal review (look at our decision again) if you disagree with it, if you think we haven't taken something into account or if you have new information that you think would be helpful to us. If you want to ask for a review, you need to do this in writing, within one month of the date of the decision letter we send to you. You can do this by emailing localsupport@shropshire.gov.uk, as your request will reach us quicker by email.

If you are unable to do this, you can write to us at:

  • Welfare Support Team, Shropshire Council, PO Box 4826, SHREWSBURY, SY1 9LJ.  Your decision letter will provide you with more information on this.

If we are unable to change our decision, you can choose the route of judicial review.

Referrals to resilience services (additional help)

We may be able to help you with your immediate needs, but with your consent, we may also refer you to other services and agencies that may be able to provide you with help so that you can manage your finances or situation more easily in the future. This might include the following:

  • A referral to Citizens Advice Shropshire if you have any priority debts. Priority debts are as follows: Rent arrears; mortgage arrears or secured loan arrears; council tax arrears; gas or electricity bills; phone or internet bills; TV licence payments; court fines; overpaid tax credits; payment for goods bought on hire purchase or conditional sale; unpaid income tax; National Insurance or VAT; and unpaid child maintenance
  • Referral to services that can help with substance misuse or alcohol abuse issues
  • Gambling support
  • Employment support
  • A range of support services who can help you with other personal difficulties

Refer to the section below for other services and agencies that you may wish to make contact with yourself.

Other help

Cost of living help

Increases in the cost of food, fuel and utilities will affect many households in Shropshire, so for useful links, tips and pointers on where and how to find support across Shropshire, take a look at the information on our cost of living page.

Energy

We share people's concerns over the rise in energy costs. We may be able to help you if you're struggling to pay your energy bills. If you pay for your energy by a regular direct debit to your energy supplier, please contact your energy company if you're struggling to make payments, as they may have a scheme that can help you.

If you're worried about your energy bills or would like more information on energy efficiency, please contact the charity Marches Energy Advice (0800 112 3743 or email ksw@mea.org.uk).

Other useful links:

Water

We may be able to help with water costs, but we encourage you to see what help you can get from Severn Trent in the first instance help with paying your bill. They will also look to see if you are being billed correctly. If your water supplier is not Severn Trent, you can use this web page to find your supplier, so that you can ask them what help they can provide.

Council tax

If you're struggling to pay your council tax you should first see if you can apply for a reduction through our Council Tax Support Scheme, which is administered by our Benefits Service. If you need to speak to our Revenues Service about your council tax or have a query about your Council Tax Support application, contact them here.

The Revenues Service may refer you to the Welfare Support Team to see if you may qualify for a crisis payment, but you should contact them in the first instance if you need help with your council tax.

Help with your mortgage

If you are struggling to pay your mortgage, Citizens Advice have some useful help if you're struggling to pay.

Help with budgeting and money

If you need help to manage your money, the following organisations may be able to help you:

If you'd prefer to look into how you can manage your money yourself, the following websites may be able to help you:

If you are a social housing tenant, your landlord may be able to help you:

Help to find work

JobHelp is a useful government web page providing support to help you get job ready and find work.

Connect to Work is a work programme in England and Wales to help people living with disabilities, those with health conditions and people with complex barriers to employment, or those who are part of a specialised group, to find work. For local support, go to Connect to Work.

Benefits calculator

Whether you’re in work at the moment or out of work, an online benefits calculator can help to make sense of the benefits and other help that you might be able to get. If you’re already working, it will help you to see how doing a different job, or working more or fewer hours, will affect you. If you’re not working right now, it can show you what you might get if you’re thinking of taking a job.

Gov.UK has free-to-use benefits calculators that provide you with an estimate of what you might qualify for if you choose to apply. It’s important to note that Council Tax Support is a local scheme. Gov.UK’s benefit calculators may not include all aspects of our local Council Tax Support Scheme. This means that your actual entitlement, if you choose to claim, may not match what the calculators suggest.