Lambeth Council and Lightning Reach: Transforming Access to Housing and Financial Support

Lambeth Council has partnered with Lightning Reach to transform how it supports residents facing financial challenges and housing insecurity. While there is an array of support available to low income residents struggling with the increasing costs of living, including the council’s various discretionary schemes, advice services and grants from other organisations, the fragmented landscape can cause residents to get lost in the menu of options and drop off in the process of filling in different forms for each provider.

Lightning Reach worked with Lambeth Council to launch a single digital portal for residents to find and apply for support. This approach has reduced administrative burden for council officers, improved speed and quality of support for residents, and enabled earlier, more targeted interventions.

Lambeth implemented the Lightning Reach portal to empower residents to access holistic, personalised access to support, including national and local schemes within the council as well as the wider Lightning Reach network.

Through the portal, residents can:

• self-serve and apply for a wide range of support across 2500+ schemes (covering grants, social tariffs, energy/money advice and other vital help)
• apply for housing and homelessness support from the council
• apply for Discretionary Housing Payments (DHP) and Discretionary Council Tax Support Hardship Payments (DCTSHP)
• upload supporting documents digitally and securely
• complete benefits checks and identify unclaimed entitlements.

For housing and homelessness support, the portal is integrated with the council’s NEC housing system, reducing duplication and manual processing across the council. Housing and contact centre teams use the portal to triage cases more effectively, ensuring residents are directed to the right support at the right time. 

To date, Lambeth has connected 9,400 residents to support through the Lightning Reach portal. Collectively, residents have accessed £342,000 in financial support, with the most common types of help including energy and utilities, food and essential items, and furniture and appliances.

Residents have also completed benefits checks through the portal, identifying £569,000 in additional benefits entitlement.

Millicent, a Lambeth resident facing financial challenges, was signposted by the housing team to the Lightning Reach portal. Through the platform, she was able to quickly find and apply for £500 support for essential household costs, easing immediate financial pressure. The streamlined process reduced stress at a critical point and helped her access the right support without repeated appointments or paperwork.

Belinda Lord, Revenue and Charges Manager at Lambeth Council says: “The team has had huge benefits using Lightning Reach and referring our tenants to this process. It saves them a whack of time, providing the right links and the right information, and it’s helped our residents.”

Valerie, an Income Officer at Lambeth Council, adds: “The best thing about it is our tenants feel seen because they are given what they need at the right time.”

The Revenue and Benefits team uses Lightning Reach as an application route for their discretionary schemes.

To date:

• 410 applications have been submitted for DHP and DCTSHP through the portal.
• the average award value is £700
• applications take residents around 15 minutes to complete.

Nearly 70 per cent of applicants upload documents digitally.   

Data from the Lightning Reach portal shows that the service is successfully reaching residents facing the greatest financial pressures:      

• 86 per cent of Lambeth residents using Lightning Reach have a monthly income of less than £1,000
• 73 per cent receive benefits
• 67 per cent are female
• 79 per cent come from ethnic minority backgrounds.

This demonstrates that the portal is effectively supporting those most affected by housing insecurity, poverty and the cost of living, while improving access to support for groups that are often disproportionately impacted.

The use of Lightning Reach has delivered clear operational benefits for Lambeth’s operational teams:

• reduced call handling times and fewer follow-up contacts
• less manual re-keying of information and document handling
• improved data quality through upfront document submission
• more capacity for officers to focus on high value activities, such as supporting complex cases and the most vulnerable residents.

Following the NEC integration, housing applications and documents now flow directly into council systems. As Clare Harding, Assistant Director of Transformation at Lambeth Council, explains: “With the time saved, their role now focuses on tasks that add value, like supporting applicants in preparing for their appointments.”

Lambeth continues to embed Lightning Reach within its housing service, using data from the platform to strengthen homelessness prevention, target early support, and improve outcomes for residents.

As Chris Flynn, Assistant Director of Homeownership and Rents, says: “We’re really pleased with the results from our pilot with Lightning Reach and the feedback from residents, and how it’s helping to transform how our residents access support. We’re looking forward to continuing our partnership and progressing towards our shared mission to deliver a seamless, end to end support journey to provide a single point of entry for a holistic range of local and national support that residents can access to get the timely support they need to improve their financial wellbeing.”