Hardship fund to help Lewes district residents cope with ‘cost of living crisis’

The new fund was announced on Thursday (February 4), as cabinet members discussed a wide-ranging set of budget proposals for the upcoming 2022/23 financial year.

The proposals included plans to increase council tax by £5 a year and to find new savings of more than £1.8m — including those as a result of plans to rent out the authority’s Lewes headquarters to the arts group Charleston. 

The hardship fund came as a last minute addition to these wider proposals, which are set to go to a full council vote later this month. 

While a number of details have yet to be revealed, council leader Zoe Nicholson (Green) said the £500,000 fund (to be drawn from council reserves) would be intended to act as a support grant for residents hit by rising inflation and energy prices. 

Cllr Nicholson said: “We are looking at huge reductions in people’s standards of living and, as a result, I have asked officers to come to full council with proposals for the creation of a household support fund that supports people. 

“With the rising energy prices people have to make choices between food and energy bills and part of the reason I am proposing that is because the council itself has a responsibility, I believe, to do what we can with what we have. 

“Members of cabinet will know that our MTFS [Medium Term Financial Plan] has projected that our reserves are growing over the next couple of years, which means that we are in a stable place to be able to create this household support grant.”

She added: “It is going to be much-needed through our district so that we can make sure that the impact of other people’s errors aren’t felt by those people who have lost so much in the past and the coming months.” 

While supported by other cabinet members, the last minute nature of the fund’s announcement saw some criticism from Conservative group leader Isabelle Linington. 

Cllr Linington said that, by being announced at short notice, the funding proposals had not been given proper consideration by the council’s scrutiny process. However, she stopped short of saying her group opposed it, citing the need to see more details. 

The hardship fund comes alongside plans to increase LDC’s share of council tax by £5 for a Band D household next year — the maximum amount allowed without triggering a local referendum. This would come alongside the council tax rises from other authorities expected to hit next year. 

During the same meeting cabinet members also backed proposals to increase its social and affordable housing rents (including shared ownership properties) by 4.1 per cent, in line with government recommendations. The income from this would not pay into the main council budget, however.

These would come alongside new savings totalling £1.183m, mostly (£500,000 of the total figure) as a result of changes to capital financing.

The other large part of the savings planned for 2022/23 is expected to come in the form of ‘re-shaping’ a number of council departments. This is expected to bring savings of around £447,000. 

Alongside this, the council expects to generate around £155,000 from its plans to lease Southover House to Charleston. These plans, which would involve the arts group using the building as a ‘creative centre’, were approved separately to the budget proposals.

The full budget proposals will be subject to further debate at a full council meeting on Monday, February 21.