Household Support Fund

On this page
About the Household Support Fund
How will the fund be used?
Who will receive payments, and when?
Find out if you can apply
Application decisions and appeals
More information and support
We’d like your feedback
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.

Reading received £1,992,735 to help residents in need, including low-income families, care leavers, and pensioners. The grant helps families and vulnerable individuals who may struggle to pay for basic living costs, such as:

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

How will the funding be used?

Each council has the flexibility to use the funds in ways that best support their residents. In Reading, we will use the funding as follows:

direct financial support for low-income households with children who directly receive pupil premium free school meals, and for care leavers
a scheme that allows residents to apply for financial help if they are struggling
cost-of-living support for low-income households, including specific funding for charities that help with school uniforms
financial support for pensioner households on low incomes who do not qualify for the Government’s Winter Fuel Payment
funding for local community organisations supporting residents who are struggling due to the cost of living
increasing the number of targeted two-year old families accessing Early Years services

A small proportion of the funding will be used to cover administration costs, as allowed by the government.

Who will receive payments, and when?

If you fall into one of the following categories, your payment voucher will have been sent to you automatically. You do not need to apply.

Families with children who are automatically eligible pupil premium / free school meal support

You will have automatically received a £125 voucher by post from the Post Office.

Care leavers

Most care leavers will have received a £125 voucher by post from the Post Office. Some may have received their vouchers directly from the Leaving Care Team.

Vouchers will be sent in July and December 2025 and will need to be cashed by the end of September 2025, and January 2026.

Pensioners on low incomes

Pensioner households on low incomes will receive a £200 voucher by post from the Post Office. The specific eligibility criteria for this will be confirmed later in the year.

Vouchers will be sent in December 2025 and will need to be cashed by the end of January 2026.

If you have any queries about these vouchers, please check our frequently asked questions. Alternatively, you can contact us by:

calling the Council’s Household Support Fund helpline on 0118 9373797 - open between 10am to 12pm, and 2pm to 4pm Monday to Friday
emailing household.support@reading.gov.uk

Find out if you can apply

Find out here

Reading residents on low incomes who are struggling with the rising cost of living can apply to receive a £100 Household Support Fund payment.

Households that receive income-based benefits are automatically viewed as having a low income and are therefore eligible to apply.

If you do not receive income-based or state benefits but are facing challenges that affect your cost of living, we will do a basic assessment of your income, essential outgoings and savings as part of the application. Essential outgoings include:

rent/mortgage payments
council Tax
utility bills
food
transport
clothing
childcare costs

Completing an application does not offer immediate financial support to residents. Each application will need to be processed. The time to complete processing depends on the number of applications received.

Support will be prioritised for:

residents over state pension age
carers
Care Leavers
people with disabilities
families with children on Pupil Premium
people living alone 
residents in unstable jobs
large households 
people with energy inefficient homes 
households with prepayment energy meters 
private renters
victims of crime 
veterans
residents whose first language is not English
residents with diverse ethnic backgrounds

How to apply

To apply, you will need:

Council Tax account number – starts with a 6 and can be found on your Council Tax bill
National Insurance number for you and your partner (where applicable)
Details of income/benefits for you and your partner (where applicable)
Details of essential outgoings for you and your partner (where applicable)
Details of any savings you and your partner have (where applicable)
Details of how you plan to use the support for things like food, energy, water, wider essentials and housing costs*
Details of current circumstances that have led you to request support

Note: if you have more than £2000 in savings, you are not eligible to apply.

*Applicants needing help with housing costs may be referred to other support. Government rules state that rent support should come from Universal Credit, Housing Benefit, or Discretionary Housing Payments before using the Household Support Fund.

Application decisions and appeals

The decision to approve or reject will be made by council officers administering the scheme. Their decision will be final and there will be no right to appeal.

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.

If you have any queries about these vouchers, please check our frequently asked questions. Alternatively, you can contact us by:

calling the Council’s Household Support Fund helpline on 0118 9373797 - open between 10am to 12pm, and 2pm to 4pm Monday to Friday
emailing household.support@reading.gov.uk

We’d like your feedback

Reading Borough Council would like to know how the Household Support Fund support has helped you. To help us understand this, you may be contacted using the contact details we have for you.

Please tell us how the Household Support Fund has helped you by completing our feedback survey.

Complete feedback survey

Frequently asked questions

What is the Household Support Fund?

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

A Household Support Fund (HSF) grant of £1,992,735.18 has been confirmed for Reading borough to provide cost of living support between 1 April 2025 and the 31 March 2026.

The grant is 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 is for?

Funding is aimed at anyone who is vulnerable or cannot pay for essentials. You do not have to be getting benefits to get help from your local council. If you get benefits, they will not be affected if you get a payment from a Household Support Fund scheme.

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

Whilst there are some broad rules that each local council that receives a Household Support Fund grant from the government must follow, there is 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 does not get the same amount of grant funding. The amount of grant funding is decided by the government and is 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 receives 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

How is Reading Borough Council using its Household Support Fund grant?

The utilisation of the HSF grant in Reading over the coming year is focused on the following key elements:

The provision of direct financial support to low-income households with children in direct receipt of pupil premium/free school meals, and care leavers.
An application-based scheme that allows residents to apply for support if they are struggling financially.
Support to low-income households affected by the cost-of-living, along with specific funding to VCS organisations who provide residents from low-income households with support for school uniforms.
Financial support to pensioners on low incomes who do not qualify for the Winter Fuel Payment from Government
Funding for local community organisations supporting residents who are struggling due to the cost of living
Increasing the number of targeted two-year old families accessing Early Years services
In line with government guidance, a small proportion of the funding is being used to cover administration costs.

Why do 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 isn’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.

Who will be getting payments sent to them as part of the Reading Household Support Fund?

The following residents will be getting payments sent directly to them as part of the Household Support Fund.

Who	What	When	How
Households with children in receipt of pupil premium/free school meals	One payment of £125	Payment in July 25 and December 2025.	Post Office voucher
Care leavers	One payment of £125	Payment in July 25 and December 2025.	Post Office voucher
Low-income pensioner households	One payment of £200	Payment in December 2024	Post Office voucher

What if I don’t receive a voucher?

If you think that you are eligible to receive a voucher as a household detailed above, but you have not received a voucher, please wait until after 31st July 2025 or 31st December 2025 to contact the council about this.

How long do I have to cash my voucher?

For households receiving a voucher issued in July 2025 will have until the end of September 2025 to cash this. For households receiving a voucher issued in December 2025 will have until the end of January 2026 to cash this You won’t be able to cash this voucher after this date.

How can other residents get financial help from Household Support Fund?

An application scheme is available to enable Reading residents to apply for financial support.

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: