Cornwall Council wanted to spend its Discretionary Housing Payment (DHP) fund where it was most needed. With the help of the LIFT platform from Policy in Practice they unlocked insights from their administrative datasets to proactively identify and target households most at risk or in financial crisis across the county. In this way, they ensured their DHP money reached residents most in need. 80% of financially vulnerable people who engaged with the DHP take up campaign received an average of £450 each.
Cornwall Council’s good news story from 2020
“Policy in Practice helped us to identify households most in need of DHP support. The LIFT platform identified private renters who had been impacted by housing reforms and were experiencing a cash shortfall. Using these insights, and with support from Policy in Practice, we designed a proof of concept data-led campaign that was executed from August 2020. A small group of 150 of households were contacted via three different communication channels: personalised letters, non-personalised flyers and outbound phone calls. The recipients were invited to contact us to apply for a DHP, either by visiting a webpage or calling the team. Results showed there was significantly more engagement with people who received direct phone calls than a letter or leaflet so we then phoned everyone over a two week period to ensure maximum impact.
We successfully contacted 58% of the chosen group and, of all the applications received, a staggering 80% were successfully awarded DHP support. As a result, the council awarded £10,492.56 in DHP payments, an average of over £450 per household.
The high number of people who applied for and received a DHP from the chosen cohort demonstrates the proof of concept for this type of data-led take up campaign. By using our administrative data with a LIFT platform we were able to target discretionary support to the right group of people from the very beginning. The successful campaign will now be built on to distribute the council’s DHP fund effectively, reaching more Cornish residents in need of DHP payments.“
Mark Ransom, Assessment Manager, Cornwall Council
The sheer number of households needing support was a huge challenge. With a dedicated yet small team we needed a streamlined approach to focus our limited resources on helping those most in need. More proactive, preventive measures were needed, and unlocking insights from data was the key.
Since early March 2020 we have seen a 19% increase in Universal Credit caseloads, bringing the number of cases up to 26,000. In October 2020 we knew from our LIFT platform that there were 1,119 households facing a cash shortfall who are eligible for a DHP. There has also been a steep rise in those who are living in temporary accommodation, with 143 households joining the dataset since the last quarter.
We chose Policy in Practice because once we saw the LIFT platform we realised the power behind it. It was detailed and it allows us to drill right down to household level.
Our proactive data-led outreach campaign saw 80% of those who engaged apply for and receive a DHP award of £450, on average.
When trying to do something different and taking a proactive approach within the discretionary awards team, the LIFT platform gave us effective analysis to target the right residents at the right time, which has been even more important this year.
I wish we had known just how much COVID-19 would change our way of working.
Now that we have successfully proven the concept of using data to identify vulnerability and target support that has been central to our DHP take up campaign, we are doing more. We will use these learnings to proactively focus our DHP take up work on more residents in need, to help them stay in their homes and to build their financial resilience.
“We chose Policy in Practice because once we saw the LIFT dashboard itself we realised the power behind it. It was detailed and it allowed us to drill right down to household level.”
Mark Ransom, Assessment Manager, Cornwall Council