What We Do
Our Solution
The original proposal for a weekly budgeting service to relieve debt related poverty was made by a small group of social entrepreneurs. We called the proposed service ‘Saving from Poverty’ (SfP) and have been researching its desirability, feasibility and viability for over 4 years, while actively lobbying key stakeholders across the public, private and third sectors.
In that time the SfP team have succeeded on a number of fronts eg: · DWP have agreed that the existing infrastructure supporting POCA can be reused to deliver SfP · The Post Office have agreed to act as a channel for SfP · Many consumer champions have backed the SfP proposals · Service providers from across the energy and water industries have agreed the principle of paying for the SfP service · All of the main political parties Conservative, Liberal and Labour are now on record in support of weekly budgeting services at post offices.
However, we have been less successful in persuading some of the stakeholders of the critical need for an all round, more holistic view of customers' needs – one that sees beyond the features that attract early interest and easy support (e.g. electronic jam jars for weekly budgets and energy tariff obligations) and instead tackles the root causes of the debt and poverty crisis facing many millions of householders.
The SfP proposition is a holistic new service built upon existing, proven and trusted technologies. It is more than just an 'account'. It consolidates and coordinates household income and regular househld outgoings. It includes but is not limited to just energy utilities as it addresses the risk from other biller companies any one of whom can and do trigger debt recovery action. These service providers include other utilities, water, telephone and television, plus the often overloooked central and local government bodies, with council tax and social services billing debts. SfP has calculations that the debt amounts owed to the public sector by vulnerable customers is almost 40% higher than that owed to the private sector, who are more advanced or more effective at chasing their debts first. It is the public sector, without access yet to an SfP type solution, that is now resorting to high profile debt recovery actions through third party agents. This includes court action which adds even more to the costs for poorer consumers. By deploying the SfP solution, much of this social breakdown and cost is mitigated.
Our work through yet another winter is now focussed on four steps to build support:
Awareness - and understanding of the merits of the different delivery models for weekly budgeting
Interest - in tackling, with the SfP team, the reasons why the poor pay more for their household services
Decision making - so that, from Spring 2011, weekly budgeting can be launched before another winter
Action - activating our SfP solution either directly ourselves or in any mainstream delivery channel
