Provision for Crisis and Resilience Fund Dispersal

Description

The Crisis and Resilience Fund (CRF) will open in Leicestershire on 1 April 2026. Funding, received by central government, is to provide financial support to residents who are experiencing immediate financial crisis. Leicestershire County Council (the Council) would like to engage with the market and ask service providers share their thoughts and experiences of this sector by completing the attached questionnaire. The Council's requirement is to be cash first but not cash only. Therefore, we require a system that is able to safely deposit cash payments into the bank account of residents. We also require the ability to provide open loop vouchers for food and fuel and cash vouchers or ATM cash options when necessary. We require the system to provide a solution that is not open to copycat scams or fraud. The council sends clear communications to residents not to click on links requesting bank details and therefore the system needs to be able to make secure cash payments into a bank account without residents being required to do this. Fraud is a concern and our requirement from the provider is to support with minimising the risk of fraud and supporting to ensure fraud does not take place. The system provided will be required to integrate with the CRM system that we choose for this piece of work. This is currently being investigated. Automation of payments within the system would be beneficial. Reporting will be required to assess how much money has been paid out. If vouchers or other payments are not cashed in, we would want to be able to cancel the voucher and reclaim the value within a set time frame. If individuals have issues with vouchers or payments a helpline would be required to direct clients to. Initial training for staff on the software will be required. The contract period envisaged is 1 year, plus options to extend for up to two additional years (likely on a +1+1 basis). The Council are looking at an indicative budget for cash and voucher awards to be estimated between £3,000,000 and £3,500,000 each year. This is just just a pre-market engagement and is not a call for competition Keywords: Fund, Resilience, Crisis