Low income families in Sheffield will get help to pay their bills this Christmas
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A pot of almost £3m will be handed out to Sheffield residents from the Government’s Covid Winter Grant Scheme.
The council will distribute the grants and decide the best method of support – it could include direct payments to individuals, directly providing meals, cascading funds to food banks or providing food vouchers.
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Hide AdThe grants are focused on helping families buy essentials and 80 per cent of the money is ringfenced to be spent on food, energy and water bills.
Councils received half of their allocated funding this week in time for the Christmas period. The remainder of the funds will be given in 2021, as the scheme is designed to run until the end of March.
Olivia Blake, Labour for MP for Sheffield Hallam, welcomed the grants but said they didn’t go far enough.
“Local authority funding has been pushed to breaking point after years of Conservative austerity and the significant pressure of responding to the pandemic over the past nine months.
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Hide Ad“So whilst this money is a welcome and much needed boost to local authority funding, it won’t go nearly far enough to make sure no child is left hungry during the holidays.
“If the Government was serious about ending child hunger, they should stop their planned cut to Universal Credit and urgently fix the holes in the furlough scheme which are leaving thousands of families struggling to get by.
“I will continue to work with Sheffield Council to ensure my constituents can access the support available and I will continune to press the Government to provide the resources we need to ensure no one is left behind this winter, or at any other time.”