Lambeth Council: Transforming access to housing and financial support

Discover how Lambeth Council is transforming access to housing and financial support with Lightning Reach. Learn how Lambeth Council is improving resident support.

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Lambeth Council has partnered with Lightning Reach to transform how it supports residents facing financial challenges and housing insecurity. Through a single digital portal, the housing team can proactively connect residents to tailored support, enable homelessness prevention and manage applications for council schemes.

The approach has reduced administrative burden for housing officers, improved speed and quality of support for residents, and enabled earlier, more targeted interventions.

Lambeth Council have partnered with Lightning Reach to transform access to financial support across the borough

The challenge

Lambeth’s housing teams support residents with a wide range of needs, from rent arrears and council tax debt to homelessness risk and wider cost of living pressures. Previously, residents often had to navigate multiple systems and repeat information across different routes within and outside of the council.

For housing officers and contact centre staff, this resulted in long calls, manual document handling, and limited time to focus on prevention or tailored support for the most vulnerable households.

The solution

Lambeth implemented the Lightning Reach portal to empower residents to access holistic, personalised access to support, including national and local schemes within the council as well as the wider Lightning Reach network.

Through the portal, residents can:

Self-serve and apply for a wide range of support across 2500+ schemes (covering grants, social tariffs, energy/money advice and other vital help)
Apply for housing and homelessness support from the council
Apply for Discretionary Housing Payments (DHP) and Discretionary Council Tax Support Hardship Payments (DCTSHP)
Upload supporting documents digitally and securely
Complete benefits checks and identify unclaimed entitlements

Housing and contact centre teams use the portal to triage cases more effectively, ensuring residents are directed to the right support at the right time. The portal is also integrated with the council’s NEC system, reducing duplication and manual processing for housing staff.

Impact for residents

To date, Lambeth has connected 9,400 residents to support through the Lightning Reach portal. Collectively, residents have accessed £342,000 in financial support, with the most common types of help including energy and utilities, food and essential items, and furniture and appliances.

Residents have also completed benefits checks through the portal, identifying £569,000 in additional benefits entitlement.

Millicent, a Lambeth resident facing financial challenges, was signposted by the housing team to the Lightning Reach portal. Through the platform, she was able to quickly find and apply for £500 support for essential household costs, easing immediate financial pressure. The streamlined process reduced stress at a critical point and helped her access the right support without repeated apointments or paperwork.

For housing officers, the ability to quickly match residents to appropriate support has reduced the time taken for tenants to find help from an average of 45 minutes to just 5 minutes.

Belinda Lord, Revenue and Charges Manager at Lambeth Council says: “The team has had huge benefits using Lightning Reach and referring our tenants to this process. It saves them a whack of time, providing the right links and the right information, and it’s helped our residents. I definitely recommend the use of Lightning Reach.”

Valerie, an Income Officer at Lambeth Council, adds: “The best thing about it is our tenants feel seen because they are given what they need at the right time.”

Reaching residents most in need

Data from the Lightning Reach portal shows that the housing service is successfully reaching residents facing the greatest financial pressures:

86% of Lambeth residents using Lightning Reach have a monthly income of less than £1,000
73% receive benefits
67% are female
79% come from ethnic minority backgrounds

This demonstrates that the portal is effectively supporting those most affected by housing insecurity, poverty and the cost of living, while improving access to support for groups that are often disproportionately impacted.

Supporting homelessness prevention

Lightning Reach also plays a key role in Lambeth’s homelessness service by improving digital triage and the quality of information captured at the point of application.

Between January and December 2025:

1,600 homelessness applications were submitted via Lightning Reach
83% included supporting documents (up from 0% previously)
59% of applicants completed an ID check
Call handling time for initial triage reduced by 67%
Appointments reduced by 13%, as residents received clearer guidance earlier
30% of applicants have accessed additional support of £40K (including grants and financial support) through Lightning Reach.

As part of Lambeth’s wider homelessness transformation programme, this has contributed to:

A 15% reduction in overall homelessness applications
A 55% reduction in new placements into temporary accommodation
A 6% reduction in the number of households in temporary accommodation

By improving early triage and signposting, the housing service is reducing unnecessary applications and appointments, while ensuring that cases with the highest risk progress quickly.

Jason, a teacher who was out of work due to health issues, was supported by Lambeth’s housing team and referred to the Lightning Reach portal. Alongside receiving housing advice, he used the portal to identify additional help and secured a £750 grant to support living costs while seeking work. Access to financial support helped stabilise his situation and reduced the immediate risk of homelessness.

Managing discretionary schemes

The Revenue and Benefits team also uses Lightning Reach as an application route for their discretionary schemes.

To date:

410 applications have been submitted for DHP and DCTSHP through the portal
The average award value is £700
Applications take residents around 15 minutes to complete
Nearly 70% of applicants upload documents digitally

Operational benefits for Lambeth Council

The use of Lightning Reach has delivered clear operational benefits for Lambeth’s operational teams:

Reduced call handling times and fewer follow-up contacts
Less manual re-keying of information and document handling
Improved data quality through upfront document submission
More capacity for officers to focus on high-value activities, such as supporting complex cases and the most vulnerable residents

Following the NEC integration, housing applications and documents now flow directly into council systems. As Clare Harding, Assistant Director of Transformation at Lambeth Council, explains: “With the time saved, their role now focuses on tasks that add value, like supporting applicants in preparing for their appointments.”

Reflecting on the partnership, she adds: “It’s nice to work with an organisation that has that can-do approach, like, ‘how can we help with that?’ and for things to happen quickly. Knowing that you can come into a conversation with Lightning Reach and focus on solving the problem makes a real difference.”

Looking ahead

Lambeth continues to embed Lightning Reach within its housing service, using data from the platform to strengthen homelessness prevention, target early support, and improve outcomes for residents.

As Chris Flynn, Assistant Director of Homeownership & Rents, says: “We’re really pleased with the results from our pilot with Lightning Reach and the feedback from residents, and how it’s helping to transform how our residents access support. We’re looking forward to continuing our partnership and progressing towards our shared mission to deliver a seamless, end to end support journey to provide a single point of entry for a holistic range of local and national support that residents can access to get the timely support they need to improve their financial wellbeing.”

Interested in seeing how Lightning Reach can work with your organisation? Get in touch at partnerships@lightningreach.org

Sunderland City Council's Financial Wellbeing Service has a broad remit: improving access to financial support, advice and guidance for residents across the city, while addressing the link between financial insecurity and wider health inequalities. As Julie Egan, Financial Inclusion Manager, puts it, "financial wellbeing is absolutely part and parcel of people's wider health".

Like many local authorities, Sunderland faces rising demand, tightening eligibility for council-led support schemes, and limited capacity. The challenge was not a lack of commitment or expertise, but how to help residents access a complex and constantly changing support landscape without adding pressure to frontline teams.

Why Sunderland City Council partnered with Lightning Reach to transform financial support

Before working with us, the council used a wide range of channels to signpost their residents to support, but their limitation lay in not knowing the full range of support schemes that were out there, and ensuring information was always up to date. The teams could only promote support they already knew about, and there was always a risk that eligibility had changed or schemes had closed.

Julie explains: "We almost had a bit of a hard stop... We could only tell them what we had, with the caveat of 'please double check because it might now be closed'."

This created risk for trusted partners and frontline workers, who were understandably cautious about sharing information that might undermine their relationship with residents. It also made it harder to encourage self-service confidently. As Julie says, "once you've got that trust there, you don't want to break it, so it's really important to be confident that the information you are giving out is always correct."

Lightning Reach offered Sunderland a way to widen access to support beyond council-funded schemes, while giving teams confidence that information was current, verified and easy for residents to use.

Implementation: simple to start, built to scale

From the outset, signposting residents to find support via Lightning Reach was straightforward. Sunderland embedded Lightning Reach into its existing communications approach, adding it seamlessly to a topical communication calendar and partner conversations. "Lightning Reach just slotted in really seamlessly... it gave us another tool to work with," Julie says.

Since partnering with Sunderland City Council:

3,250 Sunderland residents have used Lightning Reach
£92,000 has been awarded to Sunderland residents directly through the portal, with an additional estimated £110,000 identified via signposting
£230,000 in benefits eligibility has been identified
Top support categories include energy and utilities, furniture and appliances, advice, and food and essentials
Residents take an average of 11 minutes to complete their profile and get matched to support

For the council, Lightning Reach has refreshed an offer that was at risk of becoming static. "The old offer was becoming a little bit stale... this came at a really good time to refresh our overall offer," Julie explains. Importantly, by providing digital, self-serve access, it aligned with Sunderland's wider City Plan, while remaining accessible to residents who might otherwise avoid traditional routes.

Broadening access to financial support and reducing stigma

A key benefit has been Lightning Reach's ability to reach people earlier and more broadly - not just those already in crisis or claiming specific benefits. Julie notes: "Lightning Reach has won over residents who previously did not engage because they didn't think they were eligible for support; there's a real sense that it is truly is for anybody."

This matters for preventative work. Frontline teams in Sunderland now have a simple, non-intimidating way to start conversations about money without committing residents to lengthy assessments or face-to-face appointments. "People who wouldn't walk into an advice provider or pick up the phone can self-serve at any time of day and still get the same level of service," Julie says.

That broader access has also strengthened frontline relationships. One housing support worker, who felt she had exhausted every option for a resident fleeing domestic violence, was able to secure around £400 in shopping vouchers through Lightning Reach just before Christmas. "It absolutely made the difference... it helped that relationship when doors had been shutting everywhere else," Julie explains.

Better insight, better value for money

Beyond outcomes for residents, the partnership has given Sunderland clearer insight into what works. The Lightning Reach dashboard and referral tracking allow the team to follow the journey from promotion through to awards - something that was previously impossible. "Following that customer journey all the way through to the award stage has been an absolute game changer," Julie says.

This has enabled evidence-based decisions about communications strategy and resource, and partner engagement, as they're able to identify and build on the most effective activity. "Now we've got the evidence to back it up," Julie adds.

A message to other councils

Julie speaks regularly with other local authorities and is clear about the value Lightning Reach brings in the current climate. "We are all in the same boat - budgets are getting smaller and eligibility is getting tighter. We need other options for support that we can connect people to."

For Sunderland, Lightning Reach has not replaced council provision; it has amplified it. Her conclusion is simple: "Why wouldn't you get on board with something like Lightning Reach? It's been a game changer."

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