Plinth for local authorities

Run council programmes through the people who deliver them

Community grants, family hubs, hardship funds and holiday programmes all run through local organisations. They record their work on Plinth, and you see what the money reached, who took part and where they live, across all of them.

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Used by

  • Westminster City Council
  • Camden Council
  • Islington Council
  • Bristol City Council
  • Luton Council
  • South Tyneside Council

Ask Pippin

Questions people ask us first

Pippin is our AI assistant. It can get things wrong, so check anything important with our team.

What's in Plinth for councils

  1. 01

    Community grants

  2. 02

    Family hubs

  3. 03

    Hardship funds

  4. 04

    Reporting across providers

  5. 05

    Holiday Activities and Food

01

Community grants

Fund local organisations with the context of the place on every application.

Grants to local organisations

Everything in Plinth for grantmakers, plus the area each applicant works in.

  • Each application shows the deprivation decile, population and demographics of the applicant's area.
  • Restrict a fund by ward, boundary or local authority.
  • AI due diligence against the Charity Commission and Companies House, scorecards, agreements and payments, as in Plinth for grantmakers.
  • Publish a dashboard of what you have funded.
Plinth for grantmakers

02

Family hubs

Sessions, case work and referrals across every hub and partner, on the same records.

Sessions and case work

What families attend, and the support they get between sessions.

  • Every hub's sessions on one public calendar, with capacity limits and waiting lists.
  • Families check in by scanning a QR code, and registers collect the details your outcomes framework needs.
  • Case management for early help, with restricted access so staff see only the families assigned to them.
  • Referrals between hub partners, with consent and progress recorded.
  • Staff sign in with your council's single sign-on.
More on family hubs
Switching to Plinth has been great for us. Staff adoption was quick because of the clean, modern interface - people picked it up easily, even if they weren't particularly tech-savvy.

Catherine Drake Wilkes

Family Hubs Manager, Westminster City Council

Service directory

A directory partners keep up to date themselves.

  • Partners submit and update their own service listings, and your team moderates changes before they go live.
  • Listings are checked automatically: broken links and listings that haven't been updated are flagged, and AI reads each provider's website to see whether its listing still matches.
  • Embed the directory on your own website, or export it.

03

Hardship funds

Payments to residents in crisis, decided quickly and on evidence.

Hardship payments

For the Crisis and Resilience Fund, local welfare schemes and other payments to residents.

  • Application forms in residents' own languages, with eligibility set by ward, boundary or local authority.
  • AI reads supporting evidence (benefit letters, tenancy agreements, payslips, arrears letters and ID) and checks names, addresses, amounts and dates against the application.
  • Bank statements are checked against the bank details given.
  • Pay by bank export, or by voucher through our Huggg integration, including cash redeemable at PayPoint and the Post Office.
  • Every decision and export is logged.

04

Reporting across providers

The organisations you fund and commission record their work, and your reports update as they do.

One view of the sector

See who every provider reaches, without asking each of them for a spreadsheet.

  • Funded organisations record on their own Plinth accounts, and your reports update as they add people to registers and record outcomes.
  • Share your forms, tags and outcome measures with providers, so everyone counts the same way.
  • Break any report down by ward, LSOA, constituency or deprivation decile (IMD 2019), and map it.
  • Referral networks across providers, reported by need, urgency, response time and area.
We can now come to them with clear evidence and data for the impact of the sector, and can speak with a collective voice.

Charlotte Harrison

Chief Executive, Inspire South Tyneside

Security and data

Controls a council's information governance team will ask about.

Security at Plinth
  • SAML single sign-on with your council's identity provider, already set up for councils including Camden, Westminster, Bristol and Hounslow.
  • Two-factor authentication, which you can require for every user.
  • A log of who viewed each person's record, visible to your administrators.
  • Tools to clear the data of people who are no longer active.
  • AI models run in Google Cloud's London and Belgium regions.

05

Holiday Activities and Food

One booking page for families, eligibility checked as they book, and the DfE return built from the registers.

From booking to the DfE return

Providers, bookings, eligibility and attendance for the whole programme.

  • Providers add their activities, and your coordinators approve each one before it appears on the central booking page.
  • Upload your FSM list by sending it to us and we load it. Bookings are checked against it, alongside rules on the child's details and codes you issue, and coordinators can approve by hand with a reason.
  • Providers take registers on Plinth or photograph a paper one, with FSM status recorded for every attendee.
  • Questions 36, 38 and 62 of the DfE return are produced from the registers, and every export is logged.
More on HAF
Plinth stood out during our procurement process for several reasons. The team spoke our language and clearly understood how Family Hubs operate.

Catherine Drake Wilkes

Family Hubs Manager, Westminster City Council

Case studies

All case studies

Guides

See it working with your own data.

Community grants are priced on how much you give out each year. Programmes run across several providers, such as family hubs and HAF, are on the Ecosystem plan at £15,000 a year, with aggregate reporting and SSO. See pricing

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