Congratulations to Haringey Council (Day 3) and Anglian Water (Day 4) who each won £50 for their favourite charity in our prize draw. We will be in touch shortly to confirm your chosen charities.
A message from Deven Ghelani, Director and Founder of Policy in Practice
My main reflection on 2023 is on the huge amount of effort that I have seen given to supporting financially vulnerable households. Of course money matters, and we were able to highlight just how much support
goes unclaimed each year.
Our report identified £19 billion in unclaimed support and
highlighted the need for collective action to increase takeup. This figure excludes unclaimed disability benefits and discretionary support
We followed this with a report written for Money Saving Expert on unclaimed Attendance Allowance, finding that 1.1 million pension-age households are missing out on £5.2 billion annually. This was featured in their application guide
More importantly, we helped many thousands of people access that support. The highlight must be our pan London Pension Credit take up campaign which helped over 2,500
pensioners access over £3,500 each of unclaimed support, and was featured on Moneybox.
I am delighted that the campaign will grow in 2024, covering more boroughs and more benefits. All the councils we work with will benefit from our work to automate the sending of letters, texts and emails through our LIFT platform.
On discretionary support this year, we have helped our local authority clients to distribute Household Support Fund, DHPs and other discretionary funding through LIFT.
We’re expanding this capability to our Better Off Calculator via our new ‘Apply Once’ feature that’s being taken up by some of our local authority and utility providers. It saves advisors time in administering benefits so they can focus more on giving the important person to person support that’s most needed.
But there is still more to do.
The cost of
living remains a concern for 2024 and will have serious impacts on health and social care outcomes.
Our research team is linking datasets to help councils take preventative steps, and MAST, our new service joining data from adults and children’s social care with fire, police and health will roll out into its second region in the country following a successful trial period.
New partnerships such as the integration with grant search provider Lightning Reach will help us to broaden our impact.
I know how much of the support our clients provide goes well beyond money.
It’s been really powerful to play our small part as our partners tackle social isolation through pension credit take up campaigns and go further to give support to people living with a gambling addiction or offering mental health support to people in debt.
On behalf of the whole team at Policy in Practice I want to thank you for your support in 2023 and wish you a happy and restful Christmas and a positive New Year. We all look forward to doing more great work together in
the years to come.
Best wishes
Deven Ghelani Director and Founder
Festive season opening hours
Over the Christmas period we are open Monday to Friday 0900 to 1730. We are closed on bank holidays.
