Lambeth Council has set out how it will spend a £5.2m Crisis and Resilience Fund between 1 April 2026 and 31 March 2027, publishing the allocations on 6 November 2026. The money comes from a Department for Work and Pensions grant that replaces the Household Support Fund and Discretionary Housing Payments.
About £4.1m of the total is directed to crisis payments, housing support, advice and preventative services. The published allocations include £500,000 for a cash-first Crisis Payments Scheme, about £1.15m for housing payments covering rent shortfalls and deposits, and £100,000 in direct payments to families.
Smaller lines sit alongside those: £100,000 for an energy support scheme, £787,000 for commissioned advice services, and £197,000 for coordination with voluntary groups. The cash-first element is intended to reach households quickly, while the advice contracts fund longer work on debt, benefit applications and housing cases.
The £100,000 energy scheme and the £100,000 in direct payments to families are the smallest of the named lines, and both address bills and essentials rather than rent.
The shift from two national schemes to one changes the shape of the help rather than only its size. Households that previously approached the council for a crisis payment or a housing payment now meet a single fund, with one set of eligibility rules and one application route.
A smaller grant, tighter rules
The council says the grant is around £500,000 smaller than the sum available in 2025-26. New restrictions attached to the national fund, it says, mean holiday support for families will narrow. Like-for-like support will continue for families receiving Free School Meals and Council Tax Support, and for lone parents receiving Free School Meals.
Those groups were protected in the design of the scheme, which means the reduction falls on households outside the protected categories and on the breadth of holiday provision. Set against a £5.2m fund, £500,000 is close to a tenth of the total. It has been absorbed in the structure of the offer rather than in the headline payment schemes.
The package was shaped by eight community design workshops involving more than 40 organisations, four resident focus groups and an online consultation. The council’s cabinet member for economy and cost of living, Cllr Michael Chessum, called on the government to reverse austerity and invest in local government.
The council presents the allocations as a product of that consultation rather than of a fixed formula. The balance between cash payments, housing help and advice is the part of the plan residents were asked about.
What happens next
The fund runs until 31 March 2027, with payments made under the published allocations throughout the year. Households seeking help with a rent shortfall, a deposit or an urgent bill will be assessed against the new criteria rather than the two schemes the fund replaces.
For voluntary organisations, the £197,000 for coordination and the £787,000 in commissioned advice are the largest sector-facing lines, and both are fixed sums rather than demand-led budgets. Demand above those levels has no additional allocation behind it, which places the pressure on the advice contracts as the year proceeds.
Whether ministers restore the funding is outside the council’s control, and no decision date has been published for the fund beyond the current financial year. The practical question for residents is what the protected categories cover, and what remains for households outside them. For those households, the help available is narrower than it was a year ago.
