Anti-poverty investment to continue helping Fifers with the Cost of Living

Fife Council’s anti-poverty investment has helped keep many individuals and families afloat over the last few months as the cost of living crisis worsened.

That was the key message in a report on the Cost of Living put before councillors at the Cabinet Committee this morning, along with a commitment to continue funding into 2024.

The report detailed how, a concerted campaign to make sure Fifers were taking up all the benefits they are entitled resulted in an average monthly gain of £69 for all those who were helped. Councillors heard this has involved:

• Providing a free and easy to access online benefit calculator “Entitled To”
• Giving support to those who need it via telephone or by face-to-face appointments to have a benefit check completed
• Running targeted campaigns on key benefits to increase the take up in Fife.

Council Leader David Ross was delighted to see the report and agree the funding would continue to next year. He said: "There's no doubt that without the measures we put in place through our Cost of Living programme, many more people would have been in real dire straits this winter. It was crucial for us to make sure that people were getting everything they were entitled to. The online benefit checker, the staff on the phone lines and the training of staff and partner organisations across Fife to carry out benefit checks meant that more people were able to get the right advice at the right time and access to all they were entitled to."

The report also highlighted that community and voluntary support has played a key part in ensuring that people had access to support with fuel bills, food and warm spaces during the winter.  This included:

• Support to community food providers (foodbanks, larders and community fridges) to help with increasing demand
• 74 warm spaces across Fife, with some of them offering food and other activities to address social isolation
• Cafe Inc provided 162,409 meals to children and families during school holidays
• Cosy Kingdom partnership provided energy advice to approx 4,678 households
• 4,700 councils tenants received fuel top-ups
• £200,000 of financial support given to supply household goods, including Big Hoose funding

Councillor Ross concluded by saying: “We have been working with our community partners to make sure every Fifer has​ ​easy access to coordinated, practical information and support, ​​that helps reduce the impact of rising costs.​​ The OurFife community website brings all that information together in one place, and it’s easy to find what you’re looking for.

“Thanks to our staff, community partners and voluntary organisations, by working more closely than ever we can try to make sure that wherever people turn for support or advice, they’ll get the help they need. “