Welfare Support Team - local welfare provision

If you’re struggling to meet some of your essential living costs, we may be able to help from our local welfare provision funding.

Local welfare provision, including our Local Support and Prevention Fund (LSPF), and more recently, the Household Support Fund, is funding managed by local authorities to help families under exceptional pressure. It can be used to help keep families together, help people to settle or remain in the community and help vulnerable people who struggle to meet their essential living costs or who have an unexpected crisis.

We’re accepting applications to the Household Support Fund from 1 April 2024. 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 below.

Who can apply?

You can apply for local welfare provision support if you're:

  • Aged 16 or over
  • Not under immigration control (there may be some limited examples where people can get help)
  • On a low income and struggling to meet your essential living costs. Essential living costs can include things like food, energy and essential furniture items, but this is not a full list. If you're not sure whether we can use our funding to help meet the cost of the item(s) you need to pay for, please call us on 0345 678 9078.

These rules may differ slightly for some local welfare provision funds.

How to apply

We realise that people may be confused about which fund to apply for, so we've made it easier - only one application is required. The Welfare Support Team will then decide on the best fund to help you. The quickest way to apply is to 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.

Please note, an online application form is currently under development and will be available on this webpage when it's ready to use. In the meantime, if you can’t call us to make an application yourself, or with support from someone else, and you need a paper form, please call us on 0345 678 9078, and select option 1. We will talk you through some options on how to apply.

What happens once you have made your application?

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.

Right to ask for a review

Local welfare provision schemes are discretionary, and as such there are no formal rights of appeal. You can ask us to 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. Your decision letter will provide you with more information on this.

Prevention

We may be able to help you with your immediate needs, but we'll also aim to help you to be more self-reliant. We may tell you about other help that we think may be useful to you. You may be signposted to other help that will enable you to overcome your difficulties. This might include (this is not a full list):

  • Debt advice and help to manage your money
  • A range of support services who can help you with other personal difficulties
  • Community mental health support
  • Community substance misuse support
  • Citizens Advice Shropshire

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 Agency (0800 677 1307 or email advice@mea.org.uk).

Other useful links:

Water

Sometimes we have special funding available that can be used to help with water costs. When we don't, you may be able to get help from Severn Trent. The Severn Trent Trust Fund (0121 355 7766 or email contact@sttf.org.uk) can help people who are struggling to pay water arrears. Their Big Difference Scheme (0121 355 7766 or email contact@sttf.org.uk) can help people on low incomes who are struggling to pay ongoing water charges.

Council tax

If you're struggling to pay your council tax you may be able to claim 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, contact them on 0345 678 9002. If you need to speak to the Benefits Service about your council tax support application, please call them on 0345 678 9002.

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:

For further support during the coronavirus pandemic, please take a look at these pages:

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

Help to find work

We have a useful work skills leaflet that shows you the support available across Shropshire to help you find work, or to get more skilled so that you can find work. It also has information about volunteering and online work search engines. For more support take a look at our 'Work, skills and money' guide.

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.