The Tenancy Sustainment team at LiveWest has seen an increase in referrals around financial hardship and wellbeing as Covid-19 continues to hit the local economy hard. With lockdown putting a strain on people’s finances, LiveWest have helped customers in crisis by issuing more than 1800 crisis and hardship grants to households across the South West.
Gia Hancock Tenancy Sustainment Manager at LiveWest said: “Throughout 2020 and into 2021 LiveWest has seen a surge in grant applications to our crisis and hardship fund. With coronavirus having a huge impact on the lives of our customers we have seen our applications rise from 230 in 2019/20 to over 1800 in 2020/21.”
When recognising that the outbreak of coronavirus had affected community food groups and foodbanks’ ability to meet the need of customers, LiveWest responded with support totalling over £110,000. An increasing number of customers have been accessing their food banks and the decreasing numbers of volunteers and a reduction in the donations they had been receiving have seen foodbanks suffer.
Tenancy sustainment across 80,000 diverse customers is a huge challenge but LiveWest have supported people to sustain their tenancies including helping customers to unlock over £1.9m in additional benefit entitlements.
Please note, the grants we offer are subject to change. To find out what grants are currently available, visit our Grants page.