Support for families in cost of living crisis.
At Citizens Advice our focus is the growing number of local people who ask for help with essential finances.
Chancellor Sunak. Latest help package approved but more action on benefits will be important.
But it’s also our job to inform the community about the local impact of huge rises in essential costs. As a snapshot, in the year to date* we have helped clients obtain grants from charitable trusts on 137 occasions; the number for food vouchers is 223.
Last week we were pleased Chancellor Sunak introduced badly needed extra financial support.
Progressive measures
The package pleased those seeking more targeted support for low-income households:
- Citizens Advice welcomed the new £15bn package as ‘a life raft for millions of people struggling to keep their heads above water’.
- Joseph Rowntree Foundation said it was right ‘to target help at those on low incomes, who are least able to bear the shock of soaring energy bills’.
Respected commentators too, including Resolution Foundation and Institute of Fiscal Studies, confirmed the progressive impact. Resolution said the measures would help ‘fill the huge gap left in his previous two support packages, of which £6 in £10 went to households in the top half of the income distribution’.
Campaigners and commentators also approved the chancellor’s commitment to making benefits take account of inflation.
That will really matter if, as expected, further rises in inflation make life even more difficult for low-income families here and everywhere.
* MAT 30/05/22.
Struggling with living costs? Citizens Advice Online.