Cost of living support – London Borough of Merton

The communications campaign has actively engaged nearly 10 per cent of the entire adult Merton population, whilst a series of events and initiatives have helped thousands of the borough's most vulnerable residents unlock benefits and thousands more access practical, real-life support.

Supported by the council’s £3million Cost-of-Living Support Fund, close working with voluntary and community sector partners, and collaboration across the council has seen a coordinated approach reaching unprecedented numbers of residents.

In July 2022, the council was one of the first local authorities in the country to declare a cost-of-living emergency. Near-double-digit inflation led to huge increases in the price of basics, such as energy costs and food. Merton Council was able to do little about the root cause, but it was determined to support residents in the most proactive and impactful way possible through the difficult times.

Merton Council was one of the first in the UK to declare a cost-of-living emergency and agreed an initial £2m Cost of Living Support Fund to provide advice and practical support to residents, both directly and via community partners, with measures including food provision, benefits, debt and money advice, emergency grants, and ways to reduce fuel poverty.

A cross-council Cost of Living Working Group was established in November 2022 which draws together and builds on the various strands of work being undertaken to address the cost-of-living crisis by sharing knowledge on the changing scale and nature of residents’ cost of living needs, both short and long term. In the same month, the biannual Merton Partnership Summit took place where key partners from across the borough engaged in a series of workshops themed on the Cost-of-Living.

The resulting Cost-of-Living Action Strategy and Action Plan 2023-2025: A cross-council boroughwide approach to supporting people living in Merton, coupled with the Support Fund (which received an additional £1million in 2023), and a strategic communications campaign titled Cost of Living Action, provided targeted assistance and empowered residents to navigate the financial challenges ahead.

Detail on a few of the specific strands of this work and their impact is in the section below.

The council has run a series of 18 cost of living events in Merton’s libraries and the Civic Centre during the latter half of 2022 and throughout 2023 and 2024 to date, with one further event planned for this year in Mitcham. These have offered an effective mechanism for signposting people, including those who are digitally excluded to the right information, advice and support around the cost of living.

The events have been attended by more than 3,400 residents in total since their inception and have consistently received positive feedback from residents. Feedback gathered at the events has also indicated that residents travel from across the borough to attend, indicating further reach. Our most recent event in September 2024 at Colliers Wood saw the largest turnout yet, with over 400 residents attending and engaging with the council and our key partners, thus highlighting the continued importance and value that our residents place on this support. Officers are currently working up proposals for events in 2025. 

The cost-of-living fund has also been utilised to extend the Holiday, Activities and Food Programme (HAF) to half-terms, one of the few local authorities that have done this. This has provided vital support to families across the borough, with recent data demonstrating that 100 per cent of parents surveyed either agreed or strongly agreed that they enjoyed the provision and 87 per cent had something positive to say about the provision. 

Citizens Advice Merton and Lambeth (CAML) were allocated funding of £200,000 as part of tranche 1 of the Cost-of-Living Support Fund to extend their outreach advice offer. A new pilot CAML Merton Cost of Living (CoL) Service has been set up. This provides a provides a mix of open drop-in sessions and pre-booked appointments for Merton residents affected by the Cost-of-Living crisis, at Colliers Wood Library, Wide Way Medical Centre, Wimbledon Library and Pollards Hill Library. Between January 2023 and June 2024, advisers supported 1,299 Merton based individuals across 4000 advice issues, with the top three being: benefits, debt and housing. Recorded financial outcomes, calculated through additional benefits claimed, for the period were £213,694 whilst the equivalent outcomes for July and August this year totals £145,176, with there being an expectation that we will see a higher outcome overall by the end of this year. 

The council's communications strategy was rooted in collaboration and data-driven insights. Engagement with community partners enabled the council to gather valuable insights and set objectives for a communications campaign which aimed to: 

• Reach the borough’s lowest-income households to ensure communication was targeted to those in greatest need and eligible for support, while balancing demand on community partners. 
• Create simple and accessible information into a central ‘Hub’ on the Merton Council website, and drive people to it. 
• Reach communities with non-digital communication including in-person events, a helpline, a printed directory of support, and a strong out-of-home advertising component concentrated in low-income areas. 

It was clear the UK’s cost-of-living crisis would be a long-term issue, so the project strategy covered a period of twelve months from January-December 2023. A creative campaign was developed using strong imagery of diverse and relatable ‘residents’ with clear cost-of-living messages, including: 

• crisis support: ‘Grants, food support and warm spaces are available now’, 
• financial support: ‘Get benefits, money and energy advice to help you save’, and 
• for families: ‘We’re supporting families with the cost of living’.

The project leveraged the expertise of 20 community partners and council teams to design Hub webpages on the council’s website, providing a ‘one stop shop’ of information for residents. Campaign content, both organic and paid-for, linked to the Hub allowing the council to collect aggregated data. The council included the helpline number on all printed material for those who are digitally excluded. 

The campaign targeted residents in low-income households, and the council sought to understand where this audience was, and how we could reach them. The council used the Office of National Statistics (ONS) data: ‘Exploring local income deprivation’ that gave the team information about Merton households in the lowest deciles of household income. The council used the ONS data to distribute a 16-page printed cost-of-living directory to the homes of people most likely to need support. The directory was written in simple terms to be easily understood, and support people with low literacy. 

The data was also crucial in allowing the team to geo-target out-of-home advertising close to low-income neighbourhoods. Two phases of the campaign’s advertising ran over four weeks in February-March and November-December. It included formats such as: phone kiosks, roadside display boards, tram stops, and inside bus panels; it used radio, and billboards in one of the borough’s most income-deprived wards. 

As with so much of the delivery of Cost-of-Living action, partners have been central to the communications campaign, both for insight and engagement. They told the team that clients often do not have access to digital devices or do not digitally engage with services, so the campaign has a strong, non-digital component. To stay connected, the council used the cost-of-living events to signpost people to a fortnightly cost-of-living e-newsletter with useful news and content. People can also self-subscribe, and it now has more than 3,200 subscribers with an average open rate of 50 per cent. The campaign engaged local media to promote funded initiatives including the Merton Young Savers accounts, the first of its kind in the country, as well as cost-of-living funding and policy announcements.

Testimonials from clients of our Cost-of-Living Support Fund community partners:

A meeting of the council’s Cost-of-Living Working Group has taken place in September 2024 to kick off the process of officers from across the council beginning to consider next steps beyond the expiry of the current cost-of-living strategy and action plan which runs until 2025. Further consultation will also take place with key partners at the Merton Partnership Conference in November 2024.

To support residents this Winter proposals are currently being drawn up to develop a localised Pension Credit engagement and awareness campaign. There are various strands to this campaign, with a large focus on our communications engagement as well as our partners in the voluntary and community sector who can support endeavours to raise awareness.

While the programme is a continuing one, we have been able to identify a number of key lessons from this work to date: 

Polly Cziok, Executive Director for Innovation and Change [email protected]