The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Emergency cash grants on the rise in Fife.
Figures show Scottish Government gave out more than £35m to those struggling with expenses
Fife had one of the highest rates of emergency cash grants to help pay for food, heating, and other expenses in the last year.
The number of Scots applying for emergency money increased 11% in the last 12 months.
In Dundee, 5,320 payments were made – 1,819 community care grants and 3,510 crisis grants.
New figures from the Scottish Welfare Fund showed that in 2018-19, the Scottish Government paid out more than £35 million to those struggling to get by.
The bulk of the cash was paid out in community care grants, with £24.8m going on these. A further £10.4m was paid out in crisis grants.
The fund received 263,655 applications and awarded a total of 165,640 grants last year.
Social security secretary ShirleyAnne Somerville said: “The fact that so many households in Scotland are in need of emergency financial help is appalling and a sad indictment of the UK Government’s record on austerity and welfare changes.
“As their welfare cuts continue to cause harm and damage, we continue to do our best to mitigate against them and provide financial support to low-income families and carers through new social security benefits.”
Almost half (45%) of those applying for a crisis grant cited “benefit/income spent” as a reason for needing help.
Councils reported a delay in the payment of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) as being behind the rise, according to the report.
Crisis grants were most commonly given to help people with “food, essential heating expenses and other living expenses”, while 5,415 grants were awarded to help people buy nappies, toiletries and household products, a 74% increase on the previous year.
The local authorities with the highest number of applications were Glasgow City, Fife and North Lanarkshire.
The figures come only a day after a new report revealed one in five people in Scotland are living in poverty.
Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS) said more needed to be done to boost
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More needs to be done to tackle the causes of income crisis. MHORAIG GREEN
incomes and reduce living costs as the number of people seeking financial support had soared.
Mhoraig Green, social justice spokeswoman at CAS, said in response to the figures: “It should frankly shock people across the country that there was almost 200,000 applications for a crisis grant in Scotland in the last year.
“Today’s figures show that more needs to be done to tackle the causes of income crisis, particularly reducing the five-week wait for Universal Credit payments and high deductions to repay debt that leave people without enough to live on.”
Community care grants help people stay in their homes and keep families together. A total of 70,425 applications were made for community care grants last year, over half of which were approved (58%).
Crisis grants, meanwhile, are set up to provide rapid support for those in dire need – but only 52% of payments were paid within one week.
There were 193,230 applications for crisis grants, of which 65% were successful.
Labour said keeping the budget for the fund at £33m meant there had been a real-terms cut of £3.5m once inflation is factored in.
Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard said: “Despite increasing demand for its services, the Scottish Welfare Fund and local councils are being starved of cash by the SNP.
“With families using food banks and struggling to get by, this fund has never been more needed.”