Issue - meetings

As detailed in the recommendation.

Councillor Mullin introduced the item and explained that Welsh Government (WG) had recently announced a ‘Cost of Living Support Scheme’ (COLSS) which provided grants to households to help with the rising cost of energy bills.  The package of measures included £6.99m within the main scheme to provide £150 grants to circa. 46,670 qualifying households in Council Tax Bands A to D along with those households in Council Tax Bands A to I that received Council Tax Reduction.

In addition to the £6.99m, £1.15m was available to the Council to provide discretionary assistance and to support other households it considered to also be in most need of financial support or who might also be excluded from help within the main scheme.  Local authorities had complete autonomy to target the funds to best support residents considered to be in need of assistance with their living costs.

The Revenues and Procurement Manager said the report set out the proposed discretionary scheme criteria to provide some support to households who were currently not eligible for a grant within the main scheme as well as providing targeted ‘top-up’ grants of £125 to households whose children were in receipt of Free School Meals.

A small part of the Discretionary Funding was also earmarked to supporting wider anti-poverty measures and to help the Council meet one of its key well-being objectives (Protecting people from poverty by supporting them to meet their basic needs) by supporting ongoing development of the “Well Fed” food hub to allow all resident to access fresh meals at affordable prices.

RESOLVED:

That the Discretionary Policy Framework and funding distribution be approved.