Living standards· Welfare Renew and improve Setting up the Household Support Fund for the future 22 May 2025 Alex Clegg Ruth Patrick Jed Meers Mike Brewer Uisce Jordan Millie Light Rhiannon Simms Hayley Bennett Beth Watts-Cobbe Joe Pardoe This report is part of the project Safety Nets: social security of families in a devolved UK, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. At the upcoming Spending Review, the Government has a chance to deliver a long-term settlement for the Household Support Fund, the largest form of discretionary crisis support in England. Conceived of as a temporary post-Covid initiative, the HSF has already been renewed six times and will have provided an estimated 80 million awards by the time its current funding runs out in March 2026, at a total value of £3.7 billion. But the HSF needs reform as well as renewal. This briefing note draws on analysis of HSF management information data, as well as interviews with local authority workers delivering the scheme and participants of Changing Realities (a participatory project involving nearly 200 low-income parents) to outline the strengths and weaknesses of the first seven waves of the scheme. It then sets out recommendations for how a longer-term scheme could be improved.
