Advisors on the frontline say that they have never seen so many people coming to them asking for help and now the stats prove it. A new report from the Financial Conduct Authority shows that nearly 11 million people are now struggling to meet bills and credit repayments, up by over 3 million in just one year. This equates to over 16% of the UK population.
At the same time, new research by Policy in Practice shows that £19 billion of benefits and support is unclaimed each year.
Millions of families are missing out on billions of pounds of support that could help them through the cost of living crisis.
Benefits are going unclaimed due to administrative complexity, lack of awareness, stigma and the increasingly fragmented nature of support. Too many people are missing out.
Organisations across the UK are working hard to help financially vulnerable customers.
In this webinar we were joined by a panel of experts from different sectors to hear what financial vulnerability means to them and their customers, and what they’re doing to tackle it.
Listen back to hear
- Highlights from Policy in Practice analysis showing that £19 billion of support is unclaimed each year
- Panel discussion exploring the biggest challenges facing five different sectors during the cost of living crisis and how our guests are responding and the impact of their work
View the webinar
Guest speakers
- Sally Cannell, Continuous Improvement Analyst, Anglian Water
- Sharon Gill, Customer Relations Manager, EDF Energy
- Adrian McDowell, Senior Policy and Projects Officer, Greater London Authority
- Rosi Avis, Partnership and Communication Lead, Citizens Advice Manchester
- Julie Alexander, Manager for Welfare Benefits and Financial Inclusion, Northern Ireland Housing Executive
Our social tariff started in April 2022 with about 40,000 customers and we ended that financial year with just under 110,000 on it, which is an amazing increase. 340,000 customers were actually helped through our affordability schemes so we’re really positive about what we’ve been doing.
There's a lot of talk at the moment about social tariff from an energy perspective. So it's fairly new for us, but what we’ve been talking about today it's going open up lots of different ways of really helping people understand what support is actually out there for them in addition to what we can actually do.
In London, we've been working with Policy in Practice to scale up an approach to Pension Credit uptake and up to this point, about 1,700 successful claims have been made. Pension Credit within London is around £3800 per claim, which is obviously a significant amount of money.
We've recently implemented a new mobile advice van which is visiting communities across the city, particularly where we know there might be high areas of unemployment or people who are in the Indices of Multiple Deprivation. We're looking at how we can get out to communities and introduce them to our advice services.
We are proactively contacting our pension age tenants who aren't receiving any housing benefit or only receiving a small amount. Commonly, we are finding £10,000 plus in annual benefits entitlement just by phoning someone up and saying, can I take you through a benefit check?