Millions of pounds has been spent on helping struggling Nottinghamshire residents with food, energy and water bills.
A total of £5.6m of Government funding was allocated for Nottinghamshire County Council to support ”those in immediate need this winter” until March 2022.
But one councillor raised concerns over what support would be available after March – claiming “this isn’t just a Covid issue”.
A total of £2.3m of the funding was spent on vouchers for up to 27,500 children for each of the five weeks of school holidays between October and the end of March.
Free school meals will also be provided for eligible children in the Christmas and February holidays.
Some of the remaining £3.3m is being spent on helping residents with household bills.
County Council documents show that as of December 5,554 families had been provided with £42,006 of support, broken down between ‘food’ totalling £27,649 and ‘energy’ totalling £14,357.
Applications for help were processed by the council and an assessment of need and eligibility was made by “nominated partnership professionals”.
Councillor Glynn Gilfoyle (Lab) said: “My concern is that when we get to March, we haven’t got that money but that need will still be there.
“This isn’t just a Covid issue, child and household poverty will continue. Energy prices are going up.
“The Free School Meals issue won’t go away. What will go away is the ability to fund it if the Government don’t give us sufficient grants.
“I wondered if there are schemes like this available for the ensuing year.”
Derek Higton Service Director, Place and Communities responded: “As far as future funding is concerned for 2022/23, we are not sighted on any Government plans at the moment.
“We are in a moment of the pandemic where it is difficult to see what the likely impact will be on society.”
At the Communities Committee meeting on December 15, councillors were asked to vote in favour of plans to retain five members of staff in the Household Support Fund team until March at a cost of £64.9k.
The plans were approved by councillors unanimously.
Mark Walker, Group Manager, Trading Standards and Communities, added: “Members will recall the urgent paper brought to committee last time regarding the £5.6m funding to deploy the household support fund in the county.
“This paper sets out the approach we have taken and progress we have made to deploy the funding.
“We temporarily recruited to a team of five FTE roles. The report seeks approval to establish those roles until the end of March.
“We have now sent out £1.92m of vouchers for food for holidays for those entitled to free school meals, October was 839,000 and December we have sent out 985,000.”
