Will you help me if I have savings?

What we count as capital

Capital refers to a person’s cash or financial assets. It’s a total sum of different assets.

Capital includes:

cash
premium bonds
ISAs, stocks and shares, unit trusts
credit balances in bank or building society accounts
bitcoin assets
property or land you own that is not your normal residence, even if it is in negative equity.

We would not normally help if your total household savings and capital exceeds £6000.

Exceptions

If you still own a property but have had to move to a different one due to illness, onerous caring responsibilities, relationship breakdown, sudden change of working location or a temporary move with relatives or friends to reduce expenditure, we may consider help.

We include any savings and assets that can be accessed within a six-month period (whether or not they incur a financial penalty).

We disregard any loan or monies received by you, in advance, which will be used for essential repairs or adaptations.

We will consider cases where capital is above £6,000 where there is evidenced need to purchase a high value essential item that is within the scope of our grant-giving and you’re contributing to this. An example of this is a Disabled Facilities Grant.

The extent to which the £6,000 capital is disregarded depends on the amount of assistance needed and your circumstances. For example, if a small item is being requested and it would be reasonable to use some of the capital to do this because it can be replenished, we would advise you to do this.