Maximising the benefit of the Crisis and Resilience Fund

Even before the cost of living crisis, local authorities had been coming under increasing pressure to help residents in immediate need. Through a variety of discretionary support schemes, including the government’s Household Support Fund, they have been striving to keep individuals and families afloat.

The new Crisis and Resilience Fund (CRF) requires year-round coverage but offers a three-year funding settlement, a development that has been universally welcomed. As someone who’s helped authorities to deliver local welfare schemes for more than 10 years, I’ve seen how hard it is to manage the uncertainty inherent in short-term funding.

What’s different about the Crisis and Resilience Fund?

As the guidance makes clear, the primary goal of the CRF is to meet immediate needs while building more financially secure communities. This makes it different from its predecessor:

• It takes a holistic approach that blends three strands of support: crisis payments, housing stability (by folding in Discretionary Housing Payments) and future resilience.
• It extends council discretion around eligibility and delivery models, moving away from the national guidance for Discretionary Housing Payments and allowing authorities to strike their own balance between the three strands.
• It goes beyond ‘heating and eating’ priorities and states a preference, though not a requirement, for cash-first payments.

Despite these differences, councils that were already using the Household Support Fund (HSF) will be largely familiar with the crisis payments side. Yet the CRF comes with added responsibility for rules, governance and assurance across all the strands, including clear plans for how each service connects to build that resilience and reduce the need for crisis payments.

Scaling up to deliver from April 2026

For the last few months, we’ve been engaging with councils across England as they prepare to introduce or scale up their delivery models. We know that many are still unsure of the best way to connect and adjust their services cost-effectively and in a way that best meets local needs.

As we already help customers across England, Scotland and Wales to deliver crisis payments, discretionary housing payments and services that seek to maximise household income, we wanted to share some tips to maximise benefit of the CRF.

Tips for a successful transition

• Check for accessibility: many councils offer online-only routes to their crisis schemes, but this increases the risk of digital exclusion both for immediate assistance and longer- support. It’s why our services accept applications online and by telephone, taking a sensitive and trauma-informed approach to customer contact from end to end.
• Factor in speed of turnaround: during times of crisis, eligibility assessments and fulfilment need to be completed accurately, fast and consistently. Our service includes a one-day turnaround for immediate cash assistance, with white goods delivered within five working days.
• Consider staff capacity and skills: demand can vary significantly. In , for example, application numbers peak significantly in the post-Christmas period. Capacity may also be an issue for longer-term support, with full benefits reviews taking far longer per case and often requiring more specialist experience.
• Think about management information: the CRF requires more granular reporting, which means authorities will need to prove that decisions are being made accurately and consistently over time. Our systems are audit-ready, enabling authorities to review call volumes, answering times, processing speeds, decisions and all related notes, including the outcomes from appeals.

Learning from other councils

We help Rochdale to deliver both its Housing Support Fund and Discretionary Crisis Fund. This includes accepting applications online and by telephone, confirming eligibility in line with national and local guidance and working with our partner Family Fund to fulfil awards of cash, vouchers or white goods cost-effectively. Accessibility was a key priority for Rochdale, so they built up a network of 115 local partners able to support people to make applications where needed.

We’ve also seen firsthand how people can be helped through a financial shock and onto a more secure footing. During a recent income maximisation pilot, we found that many crisis payment applicants were unaware of their eligibility for a whole range of benefits, including Universal Credit, Personal Independence Payments, Blue Badges and Council Tax reductions. By signposting them to the right place – and using our local partner network to support those who needed extra help – we built financial resilience into that first interaction.

The importance of local partners

It’s clear that Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprises (VCSEs) will be vital to the success of the CRF. We already engage with more than 1,000 VSCE partners, including Family Fund, to deliver our customers’ goals, and we know that these organisations bring in-depth knowledge that maximises the value of even the smallest sums. They can also reach households that may fly under councils’ radars until the support need becomes an emergency.

The challenge will lie in how to create, sustain and report on the connection between initial crisis payment applications and broader resilience work. If any local authorities want to hear our thoughts – and those of our customers – on what works and what doesn’t, please do get in touch.

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Rob Iredale is Operations Manager within our Entitlement Services team. He supports delivery of our software and managed services that get benefits to the right place fast, including crisis and welfare resilience support for and .