Crisis and Resilience Fund (Hertfordshire)

Description

Hertfordshire County Council's local Crisis and Resilience Fund, replacing the Household Support Fund and Discretionary Housing Payments which both ended nationally 31 March 2026, backed by a £9.1m allocation for 2026/27 (a 26% reduction on the equivalent Household Support Fund allocation two years earlier). Crisis Payments — covering essentials such as food and energy vouchers and, in some cases, white goods for eligible families, care leavers, young carers and homeless households — are administered on the county council's behalf by local Citizens Advice services, alongside funding for the Money Advice Unit and Age UK for debt, benefits, housing and employment support. Housing Payments — for a shortfall between Housing Benefit/Universal Credit and actual rent — are administered individually by each Hertfordshire district and borough council.

Eligibility summary

• Available in: England.
• Open to individuals — not restricted to businesses.
• Relevant income bands: earning under the Personal Allowance.

Notes

Modelled as one entry now covering all ten Hertfordshire districts, mirroring the same two-tier pattern already used for Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Essex, East Sussex, Devon, Derbyshire and Cambridgeshire's county-wide crisis funds in this directory. Each district was checked individually for its own Housing Payment page rather than assumed uniform — Broxbourne's own Crisis and Resilience Housing Payment page (still titled 'discretionary-housing-payment-dhp' in its URL), Dacorum's own discretionary housing payments page (not yet visibly rebranded to CRF at research time — re-verify), East Hertfordshire's own coverage confirmed via third-party benefits-checker cross-reference naming East Herts explicitly, Hertsmere's own Crisis and Resilience Fund Housing Payments policy PDF and online application portal, North Hertfordshire's own Crisis and Resilience Fund Housing Element (CRFHE) page, St Albans' own dedicated 'Crisis and Resilience Fund Housing Payments' page (already CRF-branded), Stevenage's own Discretionary Housing Payments page, Three Rivers' own Discretionary Housing Payments page (not yet CRF-rebranded at research time — re-verify), Watford's own Discretionary Housing Payment application under its Housing Benefit pages, and Welwyn Hatfield's own 'Discretionary Housing Payment and Council Tax Support Hardship Relief' form, which its own cost-of-living page describes as delivered 'as part of the Crisis Resilience Fund'. RE-VERIFICATION (Aug 2026): the county council's own officialUrl was reconfirmed live and correctly titled 'Crisis and Resilience Fund' (its article body is client-side rendered, so a plain WebFetch/curl only returns navigation — confirmed via a rendered browser screenshot instead), describing the fund as launched 18 June 2026 with a new focus on prevention and early help via local Citizens Advice, consistent with the description above.

Requirement

Hertfordshire resident facing a sudden financial crisis or a shortfall in housing costs; awards are discretionary and assessed case-by-case.

Other areas' version of this scheme

Crisis and Resilience Fund (Hertfordshire) is run locally — here's the same scheme in other areas.