Turning Crisis Into Resilience: A Data-Driven Opportunity for Local Authorities

From April 2026, the Crisis and Resilience Fund (CRF) marks a major evolution in how local and combined authorities support households facing financial hardship. Replacing short-term, disjointed schemes like the Household Support Fund and Discretionary Housing Payment, the CRF provides local authorities with a ring-fenced £1 billion per year over three years to deliver discretionary crisis support. This multi-year settlement gives councils the stability they need to shift toward preventing hardship, not just responding to it. 

But how local authorities translate the CRF into material improvements in economic wellbeing depends on how effectively they can identify need, target support, and measure impact; in other words, how well they use data. 

The Challenge: From Funding to Strategic Action 

The evidence behind the design of the CRF is clear: financial insecurity is widespread. Analysis of Smart Data Foundry data, drawn from real-world banking data, shows that 16% of account holders in England with incomes less than £25,000 are regularly overdrawn, 18% do not have enough income to meet their expenditure and almost half have low emergency resilience.  

Fig.1 - Proportion of accounts in England, Scotland and Wales experiencing each Economic Wellbeing metric. Data updated to 28/12/2025. 

Our data also shows that 18-39 year olds with incomes less than £25,000 are particularly vulnerable to low emergency resilience, and that this is consistent across England, Scotland and Wales. This metric shows us the proportion of account holders with less than £100 in their account on 2 or more occasions each month, highlighting where people are less able to weather financial shocks or volatile incomes.  

Fig.2 - Proportion of accounts held by 18-39 year olds in our sample with less than £25,000 in income where the balance dips below £100 on two or more occasions within a 4 week period (‘Low Emergency Resilience’). Data updated to 28/12/2025. 

These numbers are persistent and growing, showing the opportunity for local authorities to use the CRF to make strategic interventions which can break the cycle of financial crisis, rather than the reactive and inconsistent approach to crisis support necessitated by previous funding schemes. Policy in Practice have highlighted that an approach which was heavily reliant on vouchers and food-based responses was less likely to provide the long-term benefits that a cash-first, dignified support system linked to financial resilience and income maximisation can deliver. 

With the CRF, councils must move beyond this short-term approach to one which makes interventions based on understanding which demographics and areas are in crisis and why. This requires robust and timely data; and that’s where smart data platforms can make a real difference. 

Data Fatigue in Local Government: A Real Barrier 

Local authorities are no strangers to data. From benefits administration to housing needs, councils manage multiple siloes of information. But this can lead to data fatigue - where data exists, but is fragmented across systems, hard to interpret quickly, and difficult to use for strategic decisions in real time. 

Data fatigue hampers councils’ ability to see the full picture of financial hardship, especially when official statistics can lag behind actual economic conditions. This can mean support is reactive rather than preventative; provided after hardship has deepened, rather than targeted early to avoid crisis escalation. 

The CRF guidance itself expects authorities to use new data flows and regular reporting to understand need, track outcomes such as savings, debt, and changes in food parcel use, and focus on impact rather than just spend. 

But without clear, integrated, and visualised oversight of risk and resilience across communities, delivering this agenda could remain a challenge for many local authorities. 

Bridging the Gap: Enter the Economic Wellbeing Explorer 

Tools like our Economic Wellbeing Explorer are designed specifically to help councils and combined authorities cut through data fatigue and focus on what matters – delivering for their communities. 

The Explorer is a map-based, interactive platform that provides deep insights into economic wellbeing at national, regional and intermediate zone (LAD/MSOA). It draws on de-identified financial data from 5 million consumer bank accounts, alongside contextual open data like housing, education and indexes of deprivation. 

The data is provided to us weekly, and updated in the Explorer monthly, through responsible data sharing agreements with high street banks. It provides an unprecedented real-world, near-real time view of economic wellbeing which local authorities can use for good.  

Here’s how that could support local authorities to administer the CRF: 

1. Quickly Identify Emerging Need 

The financial data powering the Explorer is updated every month, helping councils: 

• Explore financial resilience indicators over time and geography;