ALMOST £4.5m has been awarded to Southampton by the government to support struggling families through the cost-of-living crisis.

The money is for one year (April 1, 2023 – March 31, 2024) and cannot be carried over.

Southampton City Council’s cabinet is set to meet next Tuesday (14th March) to approve the acceptance of the grant.

The financial help the grant will provide is available to anyone who is ineligible for other Government support.

The government grant, which totals £842m nationally, is being offered to county councils and unitary authorities across the country.

The rules of the grant have changed over the last few years.

Between September 2021 and March 2022, 80 per cent of the money had to be spent solely on families with children.

Then, between April 2022 and September 2022, authorities had to make sure one-third of the money was kept available for pensioners.

The current phase of the grant programme, between October 2022 and March 2023, the rules changed so that residents are allowed to apply themselves for financial help.

The city council will work with food banks, schools and charities and the focus for the council is providing children from low-income families with free meals  in term time and half-term holiday activities.

Some £28,000 of the £4,445,352 will be spent on recruiting a new member of staff at the council to ‘deal with enquiries’.

Southampton is the 55th most deprived authority in the country and 12 per cent of the population live in areas which are deemed to be in the most 10 per cent deprived nationally.

Almost half the population of Southampton (45 per cent) (117,000 people) live in areas which are in the 30 per cent most deprived nationally.

  • An earlier version of this story from the Local Democracy Reporting Service wrongly said the council was considering £900 cost of living payments. The £4.5m funding is aimed at people who are ineligible for means-tested £900 cost of living payments and one-off £150 payments to pensioners.