Cllr Paul Hezelgrave, Cabinet Member for Equalities, Cost of Living and Customer Inclusion looks back on a busy first year in administration.

Over the past year, it has been an honour to meet and work with so many people and organisations across our city. The work which is being done to support our city’s most vulnerable households is inspiring and I am so grateful for the dedication of our partners, who work tirelessly to ensure that all our citizens are seen and cared for.

Tackling the cost of living crisis has been one of our top priorities this year. We successfully lobbied Government to extend the Household Support Fund (HSF) for a further six months, along with several other local authorities. We know what a huge impact this fund has had to Derby residents over the past few years. Almost 10,000 households have been provided with food vouchers, equating to more than £1.015million, and at least 4,162 households have received energy vouchers totalling over £250,000. This funding has also allowed us to fund over 1million meals for children during school holidays.

Many of our citizens have made use of our Warm Welcome Hubs, which are also funded by the HSF, with over 63,000 people accessing food, warm drinks and support through these hubs. The HSF provides a lifeline to many, so I’m very pleased that we have been able to continue providing this level of support for another six months.

In April, the first ever Derby Child Poverty Summit took place, which was organised by the Derby Poverty Commission to address the rising levels of child poverty in our city. The summit was attended by around 150 representatives from across the Council, NHS, education sector and voluntary organisations. Attendees worked collaboratively to share ideas and resources to help alleviate child poverty in Derby. This is a positive step forwards in our ambition to prevent child poverty and I’m looking forward to continuing to work with the commission on this.

To help reduce the effects of the cost of living crisis, we have been working closely with our schools to encourage families who are eligible but currently not receiving Free School Meals (FSM) to apply. Our teams also identified eligible children who were not receiving FSM and wrote to their families, asking them to accept their entitlement. I’m pleased to report that this has resulted in an additional 510 children receiving meals through their schools. All of these children will also receive food vouchers during the school holidays for as long as the Household Support Fund is provided by the Government.

The return of our Winter Coat Appeal saw more than 400 families receive warm coats for their children last winter. The appeal, which ran from November 2023 to March 2024, asked citizens to donate winter coats to one of our Family Hubs. The coats were then made available to any family who needed them for their children to use.

Our Welfare Reform team have also been working hard to support citizens, distributing dignity packs of toiletries to those in immediate need, helping them to access over £310,000 in saving awards and essential household items and supporting 63 citizens to furnish their new homes with essentials.

Pushing forward with our innovative AI journey is another priority for us and we have made great progress in providing more ways for customers to reach us, especially outside traditional working hours. Darcie and Ali, our digital assistants, have been improved to better assist and will continue to be developed further to support as many citizens as possible. However, there will always be the option for our customers to speak to a member of staff.

It’s a priority for our administration to remove barriers to mobility and I’m really proud of the work we have done to clear the backlog of Blue Badge applications and renewals that we inherited when we came into office. The team processing these requests has been considerably increased, meaning that the backlog has been completely cleared, and all applications are now being processed in the amount of time expected.

Looking ahead, we’ll continue to support citizens struggling with the cost of living, as well as focusing on campaigning for a real Living Wage to be introduced in Derby by working closely with local organisations and businesses. Our goal is to ensure that everyone who is employed in the city are properly compensated for their work by receiving the living wage.  

The rising Cost of Living has become a big part of life for all of us and I’d like to finish by reassuring anyone concerned about making ends meet that you are not alone, and that help is available. 

Whether you think you are eligible or not, please do take a look at the support available and find out if you could benefit from it.