Council To Close Borough's Cost-of-living Support Fund
Using new government scheme to assist households in need
The council is changing the way support to those in financial difficulty is funded. Picture: Wandsworth Council
August 5, 2026
Wandsworth Council will close the borough’s specific cost-of-living fund, which had £6.2million left to support struggling residents.
The council’s new Tory administration has agreed to close the cost-of-living reserve set up by Labour in 2022, returning the unspent £6.2m left in April to to its financial resilience reserve. The cost-of-living reserve funded a specific programme of measures for residents in need of support, including an extra independent domestic violence advocate.
The Conservatives will instead use the Government’s new Crisis and Resilience Fund (CRF), which has replaced the Household Support Fund (HSF), to help people with the cost of living. It is due to receive £3.8m in CRF funding in 2026/27, £3.8m in 2027/28 and £3.7m in 2028/29.
The council’s cabinet approved allocations for the first year of the CRF over 2026/27 on Wednesday night (29 July).
Using the CRF, the council will offer crisis payments and extend the Holiday Activities and Food programme, providing free activities and healthy food for children eligible for benefits-related free school meals, and Magic Breakfast packs over the next year. It will also continue to provide pantries at family hubs, housing payments, debt advice and employment support.
The council will develop an anti-poverty strategy, with the aim of carrying out public consultation in autumn and adopting it by January next year.
The cabinet agreed to add £2.1m to its budget to deliver projects that had already been allocated funds from the cost-of-living reserve until March 2027, including study spaces and Roehampton’s community minibus, where they mostly involve agreed contracts or awarded grants.
Funding for the extra independent domestic violence advocate will end in August.
The council has also discontinued summer holiday food vouchers, after the new CRF put an end to automatic provision of supermarket vouchers during the school holidays for all children who receive free school meals.
While many local authorities have stopped providing the school holiday food vouchers, some councils are continuing to do so for at least part of the summer holidays – including Hackney, Sutton, Cambridgeshire, and Bath and North East Somerset councils – to prepare families for the support ending.
A total of 767 people signed Wandsworth Labour’s petition calling for the vouchers to be continued this summer.
Labour councillor Judi Gasser told last night’s cabinet meeting she was worried about the vouchers being discontinued.
“I think we are throwing some of our most vulnerable families off a cliff and it wasn’t necessary,” she said. “The guidance could have allowed us to carry on with food support vouchers in the holidays at least for a while.”
She said the voluntary sector was already seeing people “coming to them in crisis” and families were “finding it really difficult” to apply for the CRF.
More widely, the cabinet also agreed to cancel the ringfencing of funds allocated to Labour’s Access for All and Borough of Sanctuary schemes and return remaining balances to general reserves.
Labour opposition leader Simon Hogg said the changes sent a “signal that the most vulnerable are first in line to pay the price for the budget challenges we face”.
While Councillor Hogg welcomed the anti-poverty strategy plans, he said: “The cuts to the cost-of-living work just to put extra money, a couple of extra per cent, in reserves is not in line with Wandsworth’s values.
“The cuts to domestic abuse services are going down very badly with residents, scrapping refugee support and threatening the free gym and swim under the Access for All also very unpopular.”
Conservative councillor Peter Graham said the administration was “simply dealing with the position” it had been given by the Government, which had introduced more limited funding, and was delivering an alternative package to help families in line with funding guidelines.
A report by council officers said the allocations for the first year of the CRF would “provide a balanced approach across immediate crisis payments, housing support, resilience services and community coordination, while recognising the reduced level of national funding compared with previous arrangements”.
It added the addition of an anti-poverty strategy would “build a more coordinated, evidence-led and sustainable local approach to preventing and responding to poverty”.
Charlotte Lillywhite - Local Democracy Reporter
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