Grants to hard-up Scots hit £4.8m in late 2020

Struggling Scots received more than £4.8 million in emergency payments to help with costs like food and heating in the last three months of 2020.

The value of crisis grants from the Scottish Welfare Fund in December alone was £1,702,374 – the second highest total since the scheme was set up eight years ago.

This was surpassed only at the start of the first Covid-19 lockdown in April 2020, with £2,528,902 in payments.

In the period October to December payments totalled £4,809,513 – up 56% on the same three months in 2019.

Scottish Government figures showed most of this cash – £2,931,225 – helped hard-up families and individuals pay for food, and was up by 66% on the same period in 2019.

The payments were administered by councils, which received 63,890 applications for crisis grants in the final three months of 2020 – 25% up on 2019. Overall spending on the grants was 56% more than the same period in 2019.

Meanwhile, 72% of those seeking emergency cash in the last quarter of 2020 had previously applied for such aid, which was the highest number of repeat applications in the fund’s history.

The higher number is “likely to be due to the impacts of Covid-19 as many individuals continue to experience financial hardship because of the pandemic”, the Scottish Government report said.

Since the fund was established in April 2013 until the end of 2020, it has helped 414,930 Scottish households, with payments totalling £269.4m.

While the Scottish Welfare Fund had just under £59.5m to spend in 2020-21, by late December just 53% of the available cash had been allocated.