Supporting our residents

If you have financial difficulties, struggle to pay your bills or need help to replace household appliances, we are here to help.

Through our new Helping Hand Fund from the Riverside Foundation as part of our partnership with the Riverside Group, we can provide small grants and other practical short-term support for households up to £500. Please call us on 0300 123 9966 or complete a self-referral form via your MyOneHousing account.

If you run a community group or any small organisation that supports One Housing residents, you can apply for our Community Fund. We will help fund projects that promote opportunities and wellbeing and tackle poverty in our communities.

So, if you’ve got an idea that could make a difference, we want to hear from you.

Our Welfare Benefits Advisors can help you understand what benefits you’re entitled to, whether you can get help with council tax and how the change over to Universal Credit can affect you.

To speak to a member of the team, give us a call on 0300 123 9966.

Tackling training or job hunting can be a daunting task, but our specialist team can give practical help in writing your CV, prepping for interviews, help to further your career and provide apprenticeship and training opportunities. Learn more about our service.

Barking and Dagenham London Borough Council

Barking and Dagenham London Borough Council has launched the Barking and Dagenham Money website to help residents sort out their finances.

Barnet Council

Residents across Barnet can apply for financial support to help with the rising cost of living through the The Barnet Resident Support Fund (BRSF).

Find out more

Camden Council

Camden Council’s Cost of Living Crisis Fund is for residents and families facing severe financial hardship and who cannot afford essentials – including food, energy bills, water, electricity and housing.

The support can take many forms including payments into bank accounts, vouchers, help with debt repayments or equipment that will help you to reduce your costs and/or keep warm this winter.

Find out more

Ealing Council

Ealing Council has published a range of information on its website about all the different sources of help, benefits, grants and money-saving discounts the council has on offer.

Hackney Council

Hackney Council has created Help at Hand guide which outlines support available to residents.

In addition, the council has launched Hackney Money Hub service to help residents who are in crisis and experiencing financial distress.

Hammersmith and Fulham Council

Hammersmith and Fulham Council has put together answers to the most commonly asked questions about what support is available to residents in need.

Find out more

Newham Council

Newham Council has produced a leaflet to outline support available to residents who struggle with the rising costs of food and energy.

Download the leaflet

Tower Hamlets Council

To help relieve some of the pressure caused by price rises on food, Tower Hamlets Council has partnered with Swan Housing Association to open a Food Store available to all residents living in the borough.

Residents can pick up large amount of food at a low cost every two weeks. There will also be household items available such as toiletries and cleaning products.

• 10am - 12pm, Room 5 at The Reach Community Hub
• 1.30pm - 4.30pm, The IT Room at Bow Cross Community Hub

In addition, the Council has set up a series of warm hubs for residents who may be struggling to heat their homes due to soaring energy prices.

Warm Hubs will be running from a number of Idea Stores and libraries every day during the winter. Refreshments will be provided including hot drinks, squash and biscuits. The warm hubs will also be hosting board game sessions to keep residents entertained.

Further cost-of-living information and advice is available on the council’s dedicated webpage www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/costofliving

Idea Stores information including locations is available at www.ideastore.co.uk/idea-stores

Windsor and Maidenhead Council

Windsor and Maidenhead Council has put together a list of resources on its website to inform residents about support available to them.

West Berkshire Council

West Berkshire Council has created a dedicated section on its website which residents can use if they need help with Council Tax, household bills or food.

Westminster City Council

Westminster City Council has published a support hub section on its website to outline support available to residents.

Wokingham Borough Council

Wokingham Borough Council runs a Local Welfare  Provision scheme to help people who are in crisis or emergency situation.

Find out more

In response to increasing prices and the pressures around the cost of living, the Government has been running the 'Help for Households’ campaign to raise awareness of the support available to those who need it the most.

If you, or your family member, are struggling with broadband or mobile phone bills, please check if you are eligible to switch your package to a social tariff.

Social tariffs are cheaper broadband and phone packages for people claiming Universal Credit, Pension Credit and some other benefits. Some providers call them ‘essential’ or ‘basic’ broadband.

They are delivered in the same way as normal packages, just at a lower price.

View full list of broadband and social tariffs

We are living in difficult times, where the price of energy, food and bills are all rising steeply.

The Greater London Assembly (GLA) has launched a cost of living hub, which provides signposting as well as advice on maximising residents’ income, help with keeping warm, and help for residents in financial crisis.

If you're struggling to pay your bills, we've put together a list of additional resources to help you save money on the cost of running your home.

You can also access Cost of Living Helper.

Funded by the Mayor of London and developed by the Advice and Advocacy team at Hyde Housing, the ‘Cost of Living’ tool is designed to help everyone access information and support as easily and quickly as possible.

The tool is user friendly and can be accessed from any device.

As an organisation with a strong social purpose, One Housing works in some of the most diverse communities in the UK and our workforce reflects that. At One Housing, we have a team of Affordable Warmth Officers (AWOs) who are constantly making progress in supporting our most vulnerable residents to live well in our current cost of living crisis. AWOs are friendly, knowledgeable and we love what we do. We are proud of our expertise and passionate about the high-quality service we deliver to all of our customers.

What We Do (AWO role specialties): The Affordable Warmth Officers specialise in advice on:

• Mitigating/preventing fuel poverty
• Energy efficiency solution community events
• Debt referrals
• Decarbonisation/sustainability plan
• Energy advice on high/overestimated bills
• Hardship funds to help tenants with everyday essentials
• Referring to maintenance and repair team for mould/damp/condensation issues in tenants respective property.

We put our customers first every time by going the extra mile by making sure we follow up with our customers to check on their progress. This helps us to deliver on time, increase our loyalty, shows we value our customers, and no matter what we are always there for them. The Affordable Warmth Officers can be reached directly through email at: welfarebenefit@onehousinggroup.co.uk

Food banks are community organisations that can help if you can’t afford the food you need. You’ll usually need to get a referral to a food bank before you can use it. Please find the list of organisations providing support with food bank, benefits checks and other useful information.

How to get food from a food bank

The easiest way to get food from a food bank is to call Citizens Advice (opens in new tab), where an adviser will be able to issue you with a voucher to get an emergency food parcel from your local food bank. Contact number 0808 208 2138.

Food bank referral form

As well as directly calling the Citizens Advice Bureau, you can also get a food bank referral from: A doctor, including your local GP, Jobcentre or Social worker.

Food banks without referral: can you go to one without a referral?

You can visit an independent local food bank without a referral, but if there aren't any local to you, you'll need to get a referral.

Going to a food bank

When an organisation refers you to a food bank, they’ll give you a voucher and tell you where the food bank is. Check if the voucher is only valid on a specific day - you can ask the person who refers you.

The food bank will give you a food parcel. Your parcel will usually contain enough food for 3 days. The food bank might also be able to give you essential toiletries, like toothpaste or deodorant. When you visit the food bank, let them know if you have any allergies or dietary requirements - they should be able to help you.

The food bank might be able to deliver your food parcel if:

• you live in a rural area and can't afford to travel
• you’re sick or disabled and can’t travel

Contact the food bank to check if they can deliver.

If the food bank is run by a church or other religious group, they'll still help you if you're not religious or from a different religion.

If you need to use the food bank again

You'll need to get another referral before you can use the food bank again. Some food banks have a limit on the number of times you can visit - but it's still worth asking if you really need the food.

Food bank Links:

https://www.bankuet.co.uk/find-a-foodbank

https://www.foodaidnetwork.org.uk/our-members

https://www.trusselltrust.org/get-help/find-a-foodbank/

https://foodcycle.org.uk/find-a-meal/

https://www.drinkstrust.org.uk/

https://www.greggsfoundation.org.uk/grants/hardship-fund

https://fareshare.org.uk/getting-food/

https://www.glasspool.org.uk/grants/essential-living-fund#faq-4

https://www.disability-grants.org/

Approved Food | Approved Food : Selection of clearance food & drink at discount prices. Specialise in surplus and short-dated stock, food that is either near or just passed its 'best before' date - allowing it to pass on huge savings to customers. Make sure you know the difference between 'use-by' and 'best-before' dates. This can stop you chucking out a lot of food unnecessarily. Eating anything past its 'use-by' date is risky, but 'best-befores' don't usually have anything to do with safety and are simply the manufacturer's view of when the food's no longer at optimum quality. See full info in Use-by vs best-before dates.

Benefits check and Debt advise:
Lightning | Login (lightningreach.org) : Aims to help people facing financial hardship to receive support, recover from shocks and build financial resilience.

To find out if you’re eligible for benefits, use a benefits calculator such as the ones provided by Entitled To, Turn2Us or Policy in Practice.

Free stuff:https://olioapp.com/en/ : Olio is a sharing app for local communities, making it easy to give away the things you don’t need to someone else who would value them. From food to furniture and clothing to books, Olio is the feel-good way to declutter.

https://trashnothing.com/beta/ : Trash Nothing is a similar site/app like Olio. With trash nothing, it allows you to find free things that other people are giving away such as books, clothes, furniture, games, electronics, appliances, tools, building materials and much more!

Other useful information:

Sign up to loyalty schemes for bonus offers, and some give personalised product discounts – e.g. Boots Advantage Card, Tesco Clubcard, Nectar card (works in Sainsburys, Argos, eBay) .Check for current deals in supermarkets: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/supermarket-coupons/

It’s also worth checking your local authority or council’s website and social media pages to check if they are offering any help/grants. Places of worship often also run local food banks or help and welcome donations, no matter what faith you are. If you need any assistance in applying for any of these then please do not hesitate to contact me. And if you are successful in registering or getting any help from these charities then please do let me know.

The Priority Services Register is a free support service that makes sure extra help is available to people in vulnerable situations, including when there’s an interruption to your electricity, gas or water supply.  We are asking our residents to check if you can be put on the Priority Services Register (PSR) by your utility companies.

Also, from 31st March 2023 electricity companies are, where possible, sharing PSR information with water companies, so you can get vital help and support from them such as providing bottled water bottles if there's a break in your water supply.

Eligibility for PSR:

• have reached your state pension age
• are disabled or have a long-term medical condition
• are recovering from an injury
• have a hearing or sight condition
• have a mental health condition
• are pregnant or have young children
• have extra communication needs (such as if you don’t speak or read English well)
• need to use medical equipment that requires a power supply
• have poor or no sense of smell
• would struggle to answer the door or get help in an emergency.
  
  You might still be able to register for other reasons if your situation isn’t listed. For example, if you need short-term support after a stay in hospital.

How to register

Energy suppliers and Network operators will both keep a Priority Services Register. If you think you should be added to either you need to contact your energy supplier or network operator.

Give them your contact details and as much information as you can about your needs.

Your supplier can pass your details to your network operator to add you to their register too. It’s a good idea to ask them to do this if you rely on your energy supply for medical reasons.

If you have a different supplier for your gas and electricity, you need to contact them both and you'll need to register again with any new supplier if you switch supplier.

If you need support registering yourself with your utility companies, our affordable warmth officers below can help make a three-way call with your utility provider and supply budgeting and energy advice.

• Emmanuel Odunayo eodunayo@onehousing.co.uk
• Lamin Dimonekene ldimonekene@onehousing.co.uk
• Pathik Mehta pmehta@onehousing.co.uk

The Energy Bills Support Scheme provides a £400 non-repayable discount to eligible households to help with their energy bills over winter 2022 to 2023. This is to be paid in monthly instalments from October 2022 to March 2023 and will come directly from energy suppliers.

The Energy Price Guarantee will ensure that UK households will pay less on their energy bills this winter. The EPG will reduce the cost of gas and electricity to all households with standard domestic supply contracts and will be deducted from bills automatically.

The Energy Bill Relief Scheme will enable the government to provide financial assistance on energy bills for all eligible non-domestic customers, including businesses, charities and public sector organisations. This applies to energy use from 1 October 2022 for an initial period of 6 months. This impacts your landlord and so there will be a pass on requirement in residents service charges and/or direct billing.

Heat networks will benefit from the EBRS and landlords will be required to pass through the benefits of the EBRS to their consumers, where their tariffs are set at a higher rate than the capped EBRS discount.

The discount will be applied from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.

The new scheme is designed to support businesses, charities and the public sector. These businesses and other non-domestic energy users will receive a discount on high energy bills until 31 March 2024.

For eligible non-domestic customers who have a contract with an energy supplier, the new scheme will mean that they will see a discount automatically applied to their gas and electricity bill. If/ when this become applicable to One Housing’s contracts this discount will be passed onto residents in the same format as the Energy Bill Relief Scheme (EBRS), either in the service charges and/or in billing tariffs for heat network customers.

The Treasury explained that this will be subject to a wholesale price threshold of £107/MWh for gas £302/MWh for electricity, meaning that businesses facing energy costs below this level will not receive support.

As One Housing enters into new contracts for energy supplies, these discounts will automatically be applied to our energy invoices from the suppliers. It must be noted; however, that our preliminary analysis of the energy market indicated that our next contracts will be below the threshold for receipt the EBDS.

(Please note: the Government supported price has been set based on wholesale energy costs. Customers will also have to pay non-commodity costs, which will vary per district, on top of this.)

The new EBDS has been designed to offer companies relief on high energy costs by providing more budget predictability and price stability. Companies in energy-intensive industries will receive a greater level of support. We will be informed by our Energy suppliers if our contracts at the time qualify for the discounts and will then be in a position to pass this through to our residents.

The scheme will assist businesses that have entered into fixed price contracts during a period of high energy prices to manage their costs and provide other businesses reassurance against the possibility of prices increasing again.