How CAB North Oxon uses Huggg Vouchers

The Citizens Advice teams at North Oxon and South Northants and Daventry provide free, confidential and impartial advice to thousands of people every year – a number that has quadrupled since pre-pandemic. Over 50% of people they see have health problems and/or disabilities.

The Challenge - A quick and easy way to get vouchers to those in need

Both teams were significantly under resourced yet facing record numbers of people needing help, advice and emergency funds as the cost-of-living crisis deepened. The teams are responsible for disbursing support on behalf of a number of charities and local authorities – providing vital funds quickly and efficiently to recipients in the local communities who increasingly needed financial assistance. Understandably, as a charity, the team had to account for every penny spent and every client interaction though needed, was generating time consuming paperwork.

They also worked with local councils to help deliver the Household Support Fund both by assessing and reviewing the applications as well as disbursing the funds, using retail vouchers. This involved additional administration including detailed DWP compliant reporting and provision of redemption data. All of which added to the paperwork and reporting of an already overstretched team.

The Solution - Retail vouchers sent out using emails and mobile numbers

In winter 2019, the team started working with Huggg, to send and manage retail vouchers at scale to those in need. This quickly reduced the amount of time taken up with admin as the teams could upload mobile numbers or email details in bulk, and send out hundreds of vouchers codes at once.

This meant that recipients could get the much needed funds to buy food, clothing and other essential items without the need for the team to get to bank details or provide cash payments. Each recipient could also decide which retailer to spend their voucher with, giving them the choice to choose those closest to them or those that would give them best value.

Plus the teams where also able to generate and download all the reports and MI information needed. Significantly reducing the time spent reporting back to their local authority partner on how the funds had been distributed.

Pat Coomber-Wood, CEO at Citizen’s Advice - North Oxon and South Northants and Interim CEO at Citizen’s Advice Daventry, said:

“We continue to face a revolving door of people who need our help and we feel like the Fourth Emergency Service as we are literally keeping people from going hungry, and yet we run on the smell of an oil rag with severely limited resources. We really struggle to meet demand.

The Huggg platform has been an absolute godsend for us as it saves us considerable time and money. In simple terms it enables us to process more claims and help more people. It is easy to use and the support from the customer service team for both us and the voucher recipients is invaluable. The reporting it generates is fully compliant with what is required with everything centralised and streamlined.

Huggg continues to play a big part in enabling us to do what we do and in Jan – March 2023 alone our teams used the platform to handle 575 applications and provide vouchers worth £154k to pay for much needed groceries, clothing and essential household items.”

Find out more about Huggg and how we can help you with getting out vouchers to those in need