What is the Household Support Fund?
Cambridgeshire County Council is working with our district council partners and identified, trusted community groups to identify and support individuals and families in need. This scheme was originally set up by Central Government to provide Local Authorities with short-term funding to support vulnerable households or individuals in need. The Household Support Fund is due to end on 31 March 2026 and will be replaced by the Crisis and Resilience Fund from 1 April 2026.
What kind of support is available? And who for?
Cambridgeshire Holiday Voucher Scheme
Available to families with children who meet the following criteria:
- Funded Childcare and Education for 2-year-olds under the income-based criteria (children aged 2)
- Early Years Pupil Premium under the income-based criteria (children aged 3 and 4)
- Free School Meals (children and young people aged 4 to 16)
A supermarket voucher will be allocated to parents/carers – no application is needed.
Household Support Fund
Administered by Age UK Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Citizens Advice Bureau and other trusted partners who provide wrap around help. Age UK Cambridgeshire support people aged 65 and over to apply.
Direct financial support is available to help people who:
- Currently live in Cambridgeshire and are experiencing financial hardship
- Have £16000 or less in money, savings and investments
- Have low income as specified in the eligibility criteria: Household Support Fund | Cambridgeshire County Council
Financial support will be provided primarily by BACS transfer into the applicant’s bank account, or via vouchers where these are more appropriate for the applicant’s circumstances.
Direct Support to Adult Social Care Clients
We have identified a cohort of people in receipt of Adult Social Care who will be offered financial support. The criteria are:
- Receiving care and support organised through Cambridgeshire County Council
- Living in the community, not in residential care
- Aged 66 or above at 30/9/22
- Their most recent financial assessment outcome is that their client contribution is less than £50 per week
- The amount of capital taken into account for their most recent financial assessment is less than £16,000
No application is required to receive this support. Those meeting the criteria will be contacted by letter and asked to opt out if they do not wish to receive the support. This is to reduce the overall administrative burden on this group on the assumption that most people will not wish to opt out.
How will the support be delivered?
The vouchers for the Cambridgeshire Holiday Voucher Scheme will be delivered through a company called Wonde Limited.
The support through the Household Support Fund and the Direct Support to Adult Social Care Clients will be delivered through a company called Family Fund Trading Ltd who will be issuing payments and vouchers on our behalf.
What information is being collected and how?
Cambridgeshire Holiday Voucher Scheme
No application is needed for this scheme and so no additional information is being collected for this scheme.
Household Support Fund
Age UK Cambridgeshire and Peterborough as well as trusted partners will help people to apply via an online form. When someone applies for assistance then the following information will be collected:
- Name, email address and mobile contact of the trusted group
- Name of the referrer from the trusted group
- Name, date of birth, postcode, address, and phone number of the beneficiary
- Number of adults in the household
- Number of children/young people under the age of 19 in the household
- The type of support required (food/fuel/other essential supplies)
- Required value of voucher requested
- Bank Account Name, Number and Sort Code (where a BACS payment has been requested)
- Confirmation of current financial hardship
- Whether the beneficiary has been sign-posted for longer-term support
- Whether the beneficiary has agreed to pursue longer-term support
- Whether the Trusted Group is referring the beneficiary to the County Hub and details of that referral
- Confirmation that the beneficiary understands that the above information will need to be shared with Cambridgeshire County Council and Family Fund Trading Ltd
- Confirmation if the beneficiary consents to the County Hub proactively contacting them in future regarding other offers of support
Direct Support to Adult Social Care Clients
No application is needed for this scheme. For most clients, we already hold the information that is needed to process the payment. For those clients where we do not have the required details, we will be sending a letter requesting the relevant details if they wish to receive the support:
- Name of the account holder the client would like the support to be paid into
- Bank Account Number and Sort Code
How will this information be used?
This information will be used to process the vouchers identified by Age UK Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and other Trusted Partners and the transferred allocated to the identified clients of Adult Social Care.
Cambridgeshire County Council will also use the award information to review and evaluate the scheme. We will do this by using anonymised information and will not identify anyone as it will be reported on by trusted partner and by type of voucher. We will share this with district councils and trusted partners. The councils and some partners may also ask for your permission to contact you to discuss your experience of the service.
Who will this information be shared with?
In order to provide the Household Support Fund, trusted will collect information from you and then share it with us by an online form.
The list of Trusted Partners is regularly updated and the most up to date list can be requested by contacting the County Hub. At the time of writing, our Trusted Partners are:
- Abbey People
- Age UK Cambridgeshire and Peterborough
- Barnardos
- C3 Church
- Citizens Advice Bureau City & South
- Rural Cambridgeshire Citizen Advice Bureau
- Cambridge City Council
- Cambridge City PCN
- Cambridge Cyrenians
- Cambridgeshire ACRE
- Camsight
- Care Network
- CGL (Change, Grow, Live)
- CHS Group
- Church of the Good Shepherd
- Clarion Housing
- NHS Cambs and Peterborough Foundation Trust
- DISH
- East Cambs District Council
- Ely Foodbank
- Fenland District Council
- Ferry Project
- Homestart Cambridgeshire
- Hope Against Poverty CIC
- Hope into Action Cambridge
- Hundred Houses Society
- Huntingdonshire District Council
- Jenner Health Centre
- John Huntingdon's Charity
- King Hedges Family Support Project
- Lighthouse Ely
- Meadows Child and Family Wing
- Muir Group
- Ormiston Families
- P3 Cambridgeshire
- Primary Care Network North
- Primary Care Network South
- Peterborough Environment City Trust
- Places for People
- Ramsey Foodbank
- The Red Hen Project
- Reed in Partnership
- Romsey Mill
- South Cambs District Council
- St Neots Foodbank
- Timebank, Melbourne Parish Council
- Wintercomfort
- Wisbech Foodbank
- Wisbech Primary Care Network
Only information necessary to process the appropriate vouchers/payments for both the Household Support Fund and Adult Social Clients will be shared with Family Fund Direct Ltd, this includes: Name, Address, Postcode, Mobile Number and Email Address as well as Bank Account Details if a BACS payment is being processed.
We have a contract with Family Fund Direct Ltd to ensure that your data is protected and only used for this purpose. We have agreements also with trusted partners which make it clear that they must handle your personal data in line with data protection legislation and cannot use your data for any other reason.
What is our legal basis for using personal information?
Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we have to identify our lawful basis for collecting, using, sharing, and storing personal information. We are relying on Article 6(1) (e) of the GDPR to process personal information which means we are doing so as it is a task in the public interest. This means that it has a basis in the law and is often a statutory duty as we describe below. We have also been given guidance by the Government (GOV.UK website) which requires us to deliver the Household Support Fund. We also have duties under the Care Act 2014, Children’s Act 2004, and Education Act 1996.
We will only process the data that you enter on the application for the purposes above if you tick to give us your consent to do this. If you do not complete the application, we do not store any data you have entered to that point.
We will only contact you to discuss your experience if you agree to this and provide your consent. You can change your mind at any time on this.
How long do you keep information for?
The information which we already held will be kept in line with our retention schedules. Any information retained with consent may need to be deleted if consent is withdrawn.
Your Rights
You have rights under Data Protection and these are as detailed in both councils’ corporate notice and can be accessed on either councils’ pages. You can also find how to make a complaint or raise a concern with both councils.
