With increasing numbers of council on the brink of declaring effective bankruptcy and increased Council Tax arrears, there is an urgent need to reform local government finance. In this briefing we set out our position and call for improvements in funding for councils, debt advice commissioning, and the Council Tax collection regime.

Over the past two years there has been increasing concern about levels of illegal lending. But estimates of its scale vary widely. This study involved secondary analysis of the FCA's Financial Lives Survey for 2020. The findings highlight that recent small-scale surveys indicating a significant rise in illegal lending are likely to be unreliable, and that over-indebtedness and previous, legal, high-cost credit use are dangerous drivers that need to be addressed.

With the cost-of-living crisis deepening, we undertook an independent evaluation of Fair for You's Food Club and Shopping Card trials with Iceland Foods. The products provided households with small sum credit at low interest rates to households. The evaluation revealed that the trials improved financial well-being and diets, and we recommend that the products be rolled out at scale.