Household Support Fund

On this page
About the Household Support Fund
More information and support
Frequently asked questions
Appendix – previous funding and decisions

About the Household Support Fund

The Household Support Fund is a government grant allocated by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to councils in England. The provision of this grant to Reading Borough Council ended on 31 March 2026

More information and support

For more cost-of-living advice or support, please visit our Money Matters advice pages.

There are also other government funded schemes to help with the cost of living. You can find further details on benefits and financial support on the GOV.UK website.

You can find more information about government support for rising living costs on the government’s cost of living support page.

Frequently asked questions

What was the Household Support Fund?

The Household Support Fund was money provided to local authorities by the government to help residents with essential costs who are struggling to meet the current cost of living.

The grant was provided to help families and vulnerable individuals who struggle to pay for basic living costs, such as:

energy and water
food
essentials linked to energy and water
wider essentials – such as clothing
housing costs

Who the Household Support Fund was for?

Funding was aimed at anyone who was vulnerable or couldn’t pay for essentials. You did not have to be getting benefits to get help from your local council.

Why did each local council use their Household Support Fund grant differently?

Whilst there were some broad rules that each local council that receives a Household Support Fund grant from the government must follow, there was also enough flexibility to allow each area to tailor how they use the grant to address the specific cost of living issues in their area.

Also, each local authority did not get the same amount of grant funding. The amount of grant funding was decided by the government and was either higher or lower depending on the government’s assessment of need for each local authority.

Within Berkshire, here is the amount of Household Support Fund grant each local council received for the year 2025/26:

Reading Borough Council: £1,992,735
Slough Borough Council: £2,075,646
West Berkshire Borough Council: £1,224,651
Wokingham Borough Council: £926,307
Bracknell Forest Borough Council: £978,995
Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead: £1,036,165

Why did some people get money allocated to them and others don’t?

The simple answer to this is that the funding available within the Household Support Fund grant wasn’t enough to help everyone in the borough in the way we would want to, and because of this we need to make choices about how the money is used.

Reading Borough Council wants to support families with children who may be struggling with the rising cost of living. Therefore, we are issuing vouchers directly to families who qualify for pupil premium/free school meals and care leavers.

There are many local voluntary and community organisations within the borough who are providing support to low-income households every week and we want to provide some more capacity to this support.

Finally, we know that people may be struggling with the current cost of living for many different reasons. Therefore, we have our application scheme so that any resident can contact the council and ask for some financial support. The amount of funding available for the application scheme is limited, and again we may not be able to help everyone that needs it, but it does give us a lot of flexibility to help residents with a broad range of different personal circumstances.

Are there other sources of funding or support that I can access?

Details of all the cost of living support that is available within the borough can be on our Money Matters advice pages.

There are also several government funded schemes to help with the cost of living – you can find further details on benefits and financial support on the GOV.UK website.

Appendix

Previous funding and decisions

The Household Support Fund (HSF) started in October 2021 and has since been extended several times. The HSF provides support to households who would otherwise struggle to buy food, pay essential utility bills, or meet other essential living and housing costs. So far, there have been three rounds of HSF funding. Each previous round lasted for six months. The current round of funding is available for twelve months.

The first round of HSF funding in Reading provided food vouchers to families who needed extra support over school holidays, as well as energy vouchers for targeted residents. Further funding was allocated to support Reading residents with rising food costs, as well as funding for Reading Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) organisations.

The second funding round focused on the rising cost of energy for residents with a targeted Energy Voucher scheme for those in need, especially older people, and families.

For the third round of funding, the council combined the energy and food voucher schemes into one Cost-of-Living voucher for those who required support. This approach provided added flexibility to residents who could choose how to use the funds according to their individual needs. A Cost-of-Living payment was also introduced for Reading households in receipt of Housing Benefit.

Specific details of what support was provided to Reading residents in previous Household Support Fund rounds can be found below: