Cost of living crisis

Help for those hit the hardest by rising costs

The rise in the cost of living has hit everyone, but for those already struggling to make ends meet, it’s been devastating.

We are responding to the needs of people up and down the country who cannot feed their families, heat their homes or pay their bills. Our officers are on the ground in the country’s poorest communities providing food, shelter, employment and debt advice and see first-hand how the cost of living crisis is pushing people into a poverty spiral.

While our campaign to uprate benefits in line inflation was successful, there is still a lot more that both could and needs to be done to support the most vulnerable during the cost of living crisis.

Immediate support should include:

Putting a temporary pause on clawing back welfare debt so that the most vulnerable receive their support payments in full.
An increase in housing benefit, so it covers the full cost of rent.

People in poverty need more than a hand out, they need a hand up if they are to escape poverty for good. We are calling on the Government to combine emergency support with long term sustainable investment in deprived parts of the country that will tackle regional inequalities in jobs and wages to level up the UK.

Long-term support should include:

Empowering local leaders to set targets to reduce economic inactivity through Levelling Up funds to help people that have been excluded from the job market.
Supporting those encumbered with existing Universal Credit debt by extending the Government's 60-day 'Breathing Space' scheme to include welfare debt.
Expansion of free childcare provision, so parents can work or train.
A new cross-Government task force to tackle, with empathy and compassion, the reasons people are not earning and are trapped in poverty.