Within the borough, poverty and worklessness still exist, and despite multiple interventions over the years, they have proved intractable. For many residents, living costs are higher than ever.
Being in poverty means not being able to heat your home or pay for food or rent, and facing insecurity, uncertainty, and impossible decisions about money. This leads to unjust inequalities as a cause and consequence of someone's financial circumstances.
The recent rise in prices has sparked a renewed and re-energised focus on tackling the key determinants of poverty and inequality across the whole of our borough.
There are opportunities to build on. H&F supports relatively high employment and is home to several multinational companies and a world-class university.
We are developing a range of bespoke strategies, funding initiatives and partnerships aimed at preventing poverty, and tackling the systemic unfairness and chronic deprivation that exists in our society.
Our ambition
Our ambition is that every citizen of H&F can live a healthy, happy and dignified life, free from poverty and its impacts.
This means ensuring that everyone can share in the borough's prosperity, be treated with compassion and access high-quality education, training and support that can provide the help needed to lift people out of poverty for good and prevent it occurring in the first place.
Short term goals
In the short term, we will:
- target our resources to residents and families most in need through a joined-up approach across all our services and partnerships
- build alliances to tackle the high cost of living, working together with residents, third-sector partners, local businesses, the NHS, Public Health and registered social landlords
- deliver our Food Strategy through the H&F Food For All partnership, to ensure no one goes hungry or is malnourished and everyone can eat healthily
- deliver our new Fuel Poverty Strategy and carry out the action plan to ensure that all residents have access to affordable energy and can keep their homes warm
- continue to support local businesses to tackle rising costs through support initiatives, networking events, and working with our two Business Improvement Districts
- tackle inequalities in health outcomes including aiming to reduce the gap in life expectancy between our lowest and highest income communities
- lead by example by continuing to be a London Living Wage employer
- continue to support residents through our local support payment grants and help people on pre-payment meters to access fuel vouchers
- continue to offer support to the H&F Foodbank and Nourish Hub.
Long term goals
In the long term, we will:
- use data insights to pioneer new strategies and programmes to combat the root causes and effects of poverty and inequality including through our significant voluntary sector grants programme
- help residents to build their financial resilience and maximise their income through actions within a new Financial Inclusion Strategy
- build an inclusive local economy through the next phase of our Industrial Strategy that helps all residents to gain work and skills through H&F Works, our Adult Education Service and partnerships between business and education
- improve access to financial information, including debt advice and affordable credit to build financial resilience, understanding and capability.