Plinth for local authoritiesHardship funds
Deliver the Crisis and Resilience Fund. With confidence.
The CRF replaces the Household Support Fund with a £1bn-a-year, three-year settlement from April 2026, and Plinth lets your council design, deliver and report on all four strands.
Trusted by councils and VCS partners
The challenge ahead
Councils must design their CRF schemes by July 2026, with demanding requirements from day one. Crisis payments within 48 hours, quarterly MI returns to DWP signed off by the Section 151 Officer, outcomes evidenced across seven indicators, and fewer repeat applications as the measure of whether resilience services work.
Crisis payments
From application to payment or referral
Applicants apply online in minutes and upload their evidence. AI reads bank statements, utility bills, benefit letters and ID, so officers start from a pre-populated assessment.
- Tracked against the 48-hour SLA
- Repeat applicants, children and fuel poverty flagged
- Paid by bank transfer, voucher or physical item
- Every payment triggers a resilience referral
Outcomes
Track what matters
Delivery partners' case notes and session records feed progress on the 7 CRF outcomes back to the council. AI writes up what's working, what isn't and what to do about it.
- Energy advice, budgeting and housing help, recorded as delivered
- Repeat crisis and housing payments watched over time
MI returns
MI returns. Automated.
Generate the quarterly DWP MI return from live data across all four strands. Your Section 151 Officer signs it off in Plinth, with an audit trail.
- Payment volumes, demographics, referrals and outcomes
- Crisis, housing, resilience and referral data in one report
Application forms
Forms in any language
Applicants switch the whole form into their language with one tap, or speak their answers instead of typing. AI translates responses back to English for officers.
- Arabic, Polish, Bengali, Somali, Urdu and hundreds more
- Accessible routes, as CRF guidance requires
- Speaking helps with low literacy or disability
- No interpreter needed for written applications
Crisis Support Application
Full name
Enter your full nameHome address
Enter your addressReason for application
Describe your situationUpload supporting documents
Bank statements, utility bills, benefit lettersTalk to this formSpeak your answers instead of typing
Submit applicationDelivery partners
A single platform for every delivery partner
Make Plinth a condition of commissioning and every partner gets its own case management workspace. What they record reaches your MI live, with no spreadsheets to chase.
- Consistent outcome recording across partners
- Evidence for commissioners and DWP
All four strands. One platform.
01
Crisis payments
Within the 48-hour SLA, with AI-read evidence, payment by bank transfer, PayPoint or cash voucher, and MI captured automatically.
02
Housing payments
Benefit shortfalls, rent deposits and emergency accommodation, worked out from AI-read tenancy and benefit letters, with awards and landlord payments.
03
Resilience services
Commissioned services tracked against the 7 CRF outcome indicators, from partners' AI case notes.
04
Community coordination
Digital referrals across councils, VCS and statutory services, with service mapping, no-wrong-door routing and multi-agency case coordination.
Common questions
Where is our data held, and where does the AI run?
All data is hosted in the UK, and Plinth is GDPR compliant, with data processing agreements. All AI processing, including document reading, case note generation and narrative summaries, happens within the EU, so your data never leaves European infrastructure.
How can applicants be paid?
By bank transfer, PayPoint voucher, cash voucher, retail voucher or a physical item, so each household can be paid in the way that works for it. Housing payments can also be paid to landlords.
Who is it built for?
Councils delivering the fund, whether unitary authorities delivering all four strands, metropolitan boroughs, London boroughs or county councils, and the partners delivering resilience services: community foundations, housing associations, Citizens Advice and VCS organisations.
Ready for the CRF?
Book a 30-minute demo and we'll show you how your council could deliver the Crisis and Resilience Fund on Plinth.