Welfare scheme extended
WITH A cost of living crisis fast developing, this would be the wrong time to stop operating a welfare assistance scheme, senior councillors agreed.
Calderdale Council’s Cabinet agreed to extend the borough’s scheme, which has £95,000 a year budgeted for it, for a new three-year period and to make it more flexible.
Cabinet member for Public Services and Communities, Coun Jenny Lynn (Lab, Park) said schemes were not mandatory – councils have to fund them themselves – and some other authorities had ceased to operate theirs because of pressures on their budgets.
“It’s always worth looking at how it’s worked so far, and whether there is a case for making the scheme more flexible so that it can allow more people to be supported.
“The whole question about how people are coping with the cost of living crisis is very current.
“Key statistics indicate need, debt, food poverty, fuel poverty and child poverty.
“This is very much a scheme that we in Calderdale Council
are choosing to put forward,” she said.
Coun Adam Wilkinson (Lab, Sowerby Bridge), Cabinet member for Children and Young People’s Services, said he agreed it should continue given what councillors knew about the cost of living crisis – more families
falling into fuel poverty, inflation higher than any level seen in the last 30 years, and disposable income seeing the biggest drop on record since the 1950s.
The revised scheme would focus particularly on families under exceptional pressure, homeless people, rough sleepers,
vulnerable older people, people fleeing domestic violence and a number of other categories, she said.