How Reigate & Banstead secured almost £2.6m for residents by automating admin

Reigate & Banstead Borough Council wanted to do more to maximise residents’ income, prevent homelessness, and provide the best support for vulnerable people in their area.

Resourcing this type of preventative work is a challenge for district and borough councils; identifying households in need, gathering information from various systems, and managing the admin involved in the outreach can all require extensive officer time.

Surrey County Council procured LIFT alongside the Campaign Manager, whilst Reigate & Banstead Borough Council appointed a Financial Resilience Officer to provide targeted support to those in need using LIFT insights.

Policy in Practice’s Low Income Family Tracker platform (LIFT) gave each district and borough council a reliable view of low income households, unclaimed benefits and emerging pressures.

LIFT’s Campaign Manager created the capacity to act on this insight, helping councils to quickly send communications to identified households at scale and without extra admin.

Alongside the county-wide campaigns on Pension Credit take up and Free School Meals auto-enrolment, Reigate & Banstead took the lead from what LIFT told them about their residents to deliver further campaigns of their own.

These included campaigns on:

• Attendance Allowance take up
• Healthy Start take up
• Energy support targeting those in fuel poverty
• Target employment support referrals
• Targeted water social tariff referrals
• Household Support Fund direct payments and vouchers
• Discretionary Housing Payment targeting
• Identifying and supporting those most impacted by the cost of living crisis
• Engaging with those who have deductions being taken from their Universal Credit for other debts

Throughout these campaigns, Reigate & Banstead encouraged and inspired their neighbouring authorities to follow suit and run further campaigns for their residents by sharing their experiences in the Surrey LIFT community meetings.

They also built on established partnerships with third party organisations including Citizens Advice Reigate & Banstead, and local housing provider Raven Housing Trust.

Campaign Manager automated the outreach process, saving the Financial Resilience Officer an estimated half a day per campaign. By removing these administrative tasks, the Officer could focus entirely on direct household support.

The tool also allowed Reigate & Banstead to contact their residents via text messages, which contributed to the success of their Healthy Start campaign, in particular.

Pension Credit campaign results

• 21 households are now claiming an annual value of £4,300 per household
• This equates to an estimated lifetime value of £1.24m

Free School Meals campaign results

• 60 households moved onto Free School Meals
• £82,980 additional pupil premium for schools
• £27,100 of savings for households

Attendance Allowance campaign results

• 29 households are now claiming an annual value of £136,115
• This equates to an estimated lifetime value of £914,130

Healthy Start campaign results

• £77,000 in unclaimed support was delivered by signposting people to the scheme

Energy support targeting those in fuel poverty campaign results

• 13 households received Warm Homes Local Grants worth £240,539 to improve their properties’ energy efficiency

Employment support campaign results

• Raven Housing Trust is a local housing provider that offers a Work Smart Surrey scheme. Reigate & Banstead used LIFT to refer a small cohort of households to engage with the scheme
• Surrey Care Trust is a county initiative, offering Steps2Wellbeing for those whose mental health may mean that they are struggling to find or keep employment. Reigate & Banstead also referred a small cohort from LIFT to engage with this scheme

Sutton and East Surrey (SES) Water social tariffs campaign results

• Through a bespoke report provided by Policy in Practice, Reigate & Banstead were able to determine which households were eligible for SES’s Water Support scheme
• Building on their existing relationship with SES Water, Reigate & Banstead set up a data sharing agreement with the water firm to share data on 1,969 households, with over 400 households being moved onto a social tariff so far
• During this campaign, Reigate & Banstead also made every contact count by informing households of the Priority Services Register (PSR)

Household Support Fund direct payment pilot campaign results

• The district was allocated £25,000 of HSF round 7 funding to distribute, to compare the county’s existing voucher scheme with a targeted, cash-first approach. This will inform the county’s Crisis and Resilience Fund approach over the next few years
• As part of this, the council also collaborated with their local Citizens Advice Reigate & Banstead on a voucher scheme, using LIFT insights to deliver support to households who would not normally have been supported via the Household Support Fund

Discretionary Housing Payment (DHP) targeting campaign results

• Private tenants who were struggling financially, with no savings and impacted by the Local Housing Allowance cap, were invited to engage with Reigate & Banstead’s Money Support Team for help with applying for a DHP and went to engage with the Money Support Team for longer term support
• Though take up of DHPs was low, several people targeted in the cohort went on to engage with the Money Support Team for longer term support

Cost of living support campaign results

• Reigate & Banstead invited claimants identified in LIFT as living in low energy efficiency properties and experiencing fuel poverty to attend local cost of living drop in sessions

Universal Credit (UC) claimants with debt deductions campaign results

• 18 households were identified as likely to be eligible for reduced deductions from their UC
• Those households were invited to contact the DWP to make a request for their deductions to be reduced, leaving them with a higher net UC payment each month and therefore less likely to struggle to pay their essential bills

When asked if the HSF payment that they had received from RBBC had helped them, the following responses were given by two households:

“Oh so much. It’s horrible, the feeling of knowing that you can’t food shop every week. But now I’m able to buy food again, that’s great. It opened up another source of help for me.”

“Oh you have no idea. It has lightened my emotional load. [In] a couple of months I will be ahead with the gas/electric and I can breathe.”

1. Build delivery mechanisms alongside data capability

Identifying need is only half the challenge. Reigate & Banstead’s impact came from combining LIFT insight with Campaign Manager, ensuring households could be contacted quickly, consistently, and at scale without creating additional workload

2. Automation creates capacity, not distance

By automating outreach and administrative processes through Campaign Manager, Reigate & Banstead’s Financial Resilience Officer was able to spend more time supporting residents directly. Automation did not replace personalised support; it enabled more of it

3. Small councils can deliver large scale impact

Securing significant financial gains for residents does not require large teams or complex programmes. Using LIFT to identify eligible households and Campaign Manager to run targeted campaigns, Reigate & Banstead unlocked substantial unclaimed income while strengthening preventative support