February 3, 2025

The new national Child Poverty Strategy must empower localities and regions to play their part

By Graham Whitham, CEO at Resolve Poverty

Resolve Poverty recently sent a submission to the government’s Child Poverty Unit with our recommendations for the forthcoming national Child Poverty Strategy. In this article we set out our key asks. We also call on you to support our open letter to government on the Child Poverty Strategy. You can read and sign it here.

A national strategy is vital in ensuring central government policy pulls the big levers required to resolve child poverty, and to focus all levels of government on a shared agenda that lifts low-income families above the poverty line.  

The essential first step of the Child Poverty Strategy should be to invest in the social security system and foster culture change so that social security is conceived as an investment in children and families, not a “cost” or “sign of failure.” To address the punitive cuts, freezes and policy changes that have dragged families into poverty and trapped others in deepening poverty, we call for several immediate changes:  

  • Scrap the two-child limit on benefits and the benefit cap
  • Introduce an Essentials Guarantee to ensure Universal Credit covers basic living costs
  • Replace the five-week wait for Universal Credit with a non-repayable grant
  • Overhaul sanctions and conditionality, including scrapping No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF), to build a fairer system.  

A vision for the strategy 

Building on these immediate changes, the strategy must be ambitious in setting legally binding child poverty reduction targets. It should commit government to cross-departmental leadership and accountability and embed meaningful participation of people affected by poverty throughout the strategy lifetime.  

Resolving poverty should not just be the business of central government, however. At the heart of the strategy should be a Shared Outcomes Framework that offers direction and understanding for all public bodies, including local and regional authorities and Integrated Care Systems (ICSs), as well as the Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector. 

If the strategy is to meaningfully reduce and prevent child poverty, we need partners across the public and VCSE sector to rally around it and play their part in its delivery. 

What does this mean for localities and regions?  

In December, Resolve Poverty and the Local Government Association (LGA) convened local and regional government representatives with civil servants in the Government’s Child Poverty Unit. Their message was clear: for the strategy to be effective, it must complement, build on and reinforce their efforts to tackle poverty at the local and regional levels.   

For almost a decade, we have worked with local stakeholders in Greater Manchester and beyond to support a strengthened local focus on poverty. During this time, we have often found ourselves asking: ‘what can be done locally to resolve poverty in spite of national government policy?’ Too often, localities have been left picking up the pieces of a failing economy, pressurised public services and a broken safety net 

The Child Poverty Strategy presents an opportunity to change all of that. The strategy should empower localities and regions to strengthen strategic, policy and practical responses to poverty. In our submission, we call on government to: 

  • Enact and support meaningful implementation of the socio-economic duty so that public bodies prioritise addressing socio-economic disadvantage, in alignment with local and regional anti-poverty strategies and the national strategy  
  • Commit to secure long-term, stable funding for local anti-poverty initiatives
  • Commit to fund all regional authorities’ pilots of innovative approaches tailored to local needs
  • Embed tackling child poverty as a strategic priority for all regional authorities
  • Embed delivery of the strategy in the Mayoral Council.  

The local safety net  

To consolidate these measures, the strategy must look further by strengthening and sustaining the local safety net, a lifeline for families living in poverty. To this end, we propose several measures: 

  • Auto-enrol all eligible Universal Credit and legacy benefit recipients into localised support such as Council Tax Reduction and Discretionary Housing Payments
  • Auto-enrol all children from eligible households into Free School Meals 
  • Introduce long-term, ring-fenced funding for local crisis support, building on recent rounds of the Household Support Fund to provide secure multi-year funding for local councils
  • Provide statutory guidance on the provision and administration of local crisis support, setting out a cash-first approach as the most effective and dignified delivery form, and supporting councils to use this funding for preventative initiatives.  

The voice of localities and regions  

Following our submission to the Child Poverty Unit, we are delighted to share an open letter where you can pledge your support for our calls. This letter will be sent to the Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions and Education. We know that local councils, health bodies and voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise organisations across our network play an amazing role in resolving poverty and want central government to enable them to do even more.  

We would be delighted if you would sign this letter. It will be available to sign until 27 February, at which point we will send it to government.

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This article is featured in our 5 February newsletter.

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