A report to Fife Council’s cabinet committee outlined all the support which has been given this financial year and what changes may need to be made for the coming year.

Councillor David Ross, Fife Council leader and convenor of the Cabinet Committee, said: “Over the past three years we have had a really robust Cost of Living programme which has proven to be invaluable to the people of Fife in the most difficult of times.

“We have issued crisis and community care grants to those most in need, given fuel, energy and welfare advice and support, supported families with household goods and helped tackle food poverty with Cafe Inc and our Warm Welcome locations.

“We have also worked hard to tackle the causes of poverty and carried out 11 different income maximisation campaigns, promoting use of the Fife Benefit Checker and using data from our Low Income Family Tracker (LIFT) to make sure our residents are getting all the benefits they are entitled to. This includes benefits which are Fife specific.” 

This year Fife Council has supported the Cost-of-Living Support Programme with temporary funding amounting to £3.668 million. A further £10m was provided through the Community Recovery Fund, of which £9m is allocated to Area Committees and £1m used for Fife Wide Community Recovery Fund.

Councillor Ross continued: “The council spends considerable sums in supporting residents in Fife, within crisis situations, and we continue to focus on getting to the root causes of poverty, in order to prevent crisis. This is the main ethos within the proposed No Wrong Door approach, which will provide more intensive and focused support.

“That said, we have neither the power nor the funding to tackle poverty in full and we won’t know how much money we will have available to us until the Local Government Finance Settlement is announced later this month. Once the financial position is known, we will have to decide as a Council which supports can continue through the council’s budget from April 2025.

“What I can say now is that tackling the root causes of poverty is one of our three key priorities and we’ll continue to do everything in our power to support the residents of Fife through this ongoing cost of living crisis.”