A row over the Belfast Council fuel poverty hardship fund has continued at City Hall, with smaller parties accusing Sinn Féin and the DUP of a community group “carve-up” in distributing £100 vouchers.
Parties accused Sinn Féin and the DUP of pushing through a fund that relies on distribution from 'strategic partners', or community groups, that were picked to receive money from the council in the early days of the pandemic.
The Sinn Féin/DUP plan means households earning up to £60,000 a year have the right to apply to receive a one-off £100 fuel hardship fund. Smaller parties including Alliance, the SDLP, the Greens, People Before Profit and the UUP all voted for a smaller eligibility threshold, namely £43,400 per year per household, as recommended by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
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The fund amounts to £1 million from council coffers. The council also decided to spend up to £100,000 to “support full cost recovery for strategic partners in relation to essential costs/expenses incurred in delivering the fuel hardship scheme”.
The £100 vouchers are distributed on a first come, first served basis, which has led to criticisms that the most vulnerable will not receive, and certain parts of the city will be more easily facilitated than others, with certain communities becoming aware about the offer, while others remain in the dark.
At this week’s full meeting of Belfast City Council, UUP Titanic Councillor John Kyle told the chamber: “While the intention of this fund is good and laudable, the process we have here is seriously flawed. We have set aside £1million of public funds to help relieve fuel poverty but the eligibility criteria seriously undermines the purpose.”
He said: “In East Belfast we have the funding to support 2,400 homes. But within East Belfast alone there are tens of thousands of homes that would qualify under this criterion. East Belfast Community Development Agency is our delivery partner - how are they to determine who is most entitled to it and who is not?
“The minutes suggest it is on a first-come-first-served basis. Even that undermines the purpose - those who are most knowledgeable, those who know how to apply, those who have got the best information, will have applied for it. They are unlikely to be the most vulnerable and most needy.
“The ones who will be overlooked will be the elderly, the isolated, the vulnerable, those with learning difficulties. In fact, those are the ones who are at most risk. And what will happen is we will have homes in East Belfast provided with welcome help during a crisis, but we will be left with a huge reservoir of frustration, disappointment, resentment, and a sense of injustice on the part of many many other households that are ruled ineligible because they did not enrol in time.
“Our community partners will be accused of being unfair and of mishandling the administration of the fund. We are really doing this badly. We should be supporting those most in need. We are missing the point of this fund.”
The Sinn Féin/DUP funding model, previously used over a divisive “bonfire diversion” fund, was branded a political “carve-up” last year, while the local government auditor, Collette Kane, wrote to the council to “highlight concerns.” Alliance, SDLP and Green Party said the model, which attracted criticism on issues of open process and transparency during the diversionary funding, was carried over into the fuel hardship funding.
Sinn Féin Black Mountain Councillor Ciaran Beattie told the chamber: “We had the exact same debate last month, and I don’t know why we are having it again. In terms of delivery, and why it should be strategic partners, it was a decision between citywide and community strategic partners.
“With citywide partners it would have been Barnardos, the Red Cross or Bryson. Would they have the information that is in local neighbourhoods of who is in need? No, they wouldn’t. Local community organisations are better equipped in terms of that delivery.”
He added: “The point is made that £60,000 is excessive. The reality is two domestic cleaners, working in the Royal Hospital, doing a bit of overtime would easily breach the £40,000 limit.
“They might have a family of two or three kids, their childcare would be over £400 a week, their rent could be £700 or £800 a month, their rates, their electric, their gas - the working poor are the people most in need. So by setting a £40,000 limit you would have excluded thousands of people who are in need.”
SDLP Castle Councillor Carl Whyte said: “We are predicted to have an even bigger energy crisis next winter, and there may be another hardship fund coming down the line. There are a number of things to look at. In my area in North Belfast, it is actually quite confusing depending on which ward you live in.”
He said: “People don’t know what wards they live in. If you live in this ward, you have to go to this organisation, but if you live in another ward you have to go to another organisation.
“That organisation may allow you to come in and provide evidence, but another organisation is saying no, we have public meetings during the day, and you have to come along to them. How do you do that if you are working full time? Or you are disabled and you can’t get out of the house? Or you can’t get childcare?” He said first-come-first-serve for the fund was “unacceptable.”
His party colleague Councillor Séamas de Faoite said the strategic partners “were not the best placed to identify need” in his area of Lisnasharragh in East Belfast, and said he had “serious concerns” that places such as Rosetta, Ravenhill and Wynchurch would “lose out” with the current modelling for the fund.
Green Party Ormiston Councillor Anthony Flynn, who initially proposed the hardship fund last year, told the chamber: “Sinn Féin and the DUP do not know better than the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, I don’t care what any member says. That’s an organisation that works day and daily to alleviate poverty, and (their recommendation) is what we should have gone for.”
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