An evaluation of the Leeds City Council Cash Grant Pilot Programme

The findings from the evaluation provided robust evidence that cash grants improve people’s immediate financial situation and help them to afford the essentials. Cash grants seemed to reduce the need for people to turn to emergency food aid in the short term. It has also found that people experiencing financial hardship overwhelmingly prefer cash to emergency food aid.

What are cash first approaches?

Cash first approaches mean providing people with money, rather than emergency food or in-kind support, making them an effective and dignified form of support to people facing hardship locally.

We believe that the use of cash transfers locally through councils can help prevent people needing to turn to a food bank for support. This is because cash provides people with the flexibility to spend it on their immediate needs, whether that is purchasing the essentials (for example food), getting an MOT for their car, buying school shoes for their child, or paying down debt to get on a more secure financial footing.

However, while there are some examples of cash first approaches in local councils across England, it is by no means a widespread provision. We’ve seen a huge investment in direct local support over the past two years, most recently through the Household Support Fund, yet this has not been accompanied by a large increase in cash transfers locally to people facing hardship.

The Household Support Fund also provided guidance to local authorities which mentions the use of food banks nine times and the use of vouchers 20 times, whilst the use of cash only has four mentions – which were all about discouraging the use of unrestricted cash grants. This has led to a situation where some local councils have given funding directly to food banks, or other emergency food aid providers, ahead of putting the cash directly in people’s pockets.

Cash transfers are a powerful, and dignified intervention when people face a financial hardship locally but also do not exist in a vacuum and will only remain a sticking plaster whilst the UK social security system does not provide people with enough income to afford the essentials.

Making the case for cash first approaches locally

Cash first approaches are not the norm at the local council level in England, neither is there much evidence surrounding their use. We have produced a literature review detailing existing evidence on the role of cash first interventions across the UK and the world, detailing areas of understanding which need to be developed.

The evaluation has informed a policy briefing which explores the five key lessons leaders at all levels of government need to understand about cash transfers

Publications

Cash first literature review

An evaluation of the Leeds City Council Cash Grant Pilot Programme (Vantage Point Research)