Thousands of vulnerable households are to receive an £100 payment to help towards their daily living costs at the end of this month.
The fund are going out as part of the Household Support Fund, a Government project providing local councils pots of cash to support struggling families.
Leeds City Council is to use money from the scheme to give out cash payments of £75 and £100 to residents later this month.
An £100 payment will go out to households with pensioners or children who get council tax support. The £75 payment will be sent to working-age households without children who get the support.
To be eligible for a payment, a household must have been claiming council tax support on Monday, October 23.
The support may be a welcome lifeline to many struggling families in the Yorkshire city. Figures for May 2023 show people on Universal Credit in the city had a total of £1.9million deducted from their payments.
Deductions are often taken to pay off debts such as for council tax or energy bills. The constituency of Leeds Central had the second highest total deductions in Great Britain, with a total of £624,000 stripped from payments.
More than half of claimants saw their payments slashed in Leeds Central, Leeds East and Leeds North West, with the highest average deduction at £65, in Leeds North East.
These were the top 10 areas across Britain where the mosts deductions were taken in May:
- Birmingham, Ladywood – £646,000
- Leeds Central – £624,000
- Tottenham – £622,000
- Manchester Central – £589,000
- Blackley and Broughton – £583,000
- Brent Central – £582,000
- Middlesbrough – £559,000
- Knowsley – £526,000
- West Ham – £525,000
- Liverpool, Walton – £523,000.
Great Britain as a whole had £143.5billion deducted from Universal Credit payments in May 2023.
At the other end of the spectrum, the constituency with the lowest deductions was Na h-Eileanan an Iar, formerly the Western Isles in Scotland, which paid just £26,000.
The remote region has the lowest number of Universal Credit claimants, with just 1,300 claims, and only 500 of these faced a deduction.
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