The Discretionary Assistance Fund (DAF) in Wales: payments, eligibility and how to apply

The Discretionary Assistance Fund, usually shortened to DAF, is the Welsh Government's emergency grant scheme for people in Wales who are in financial crisis and have no other way to pay for essentials. It started on 1 April 2013 as a Wales-wide replacement for parts of the Social Fund that the Department for Work and Pensions used to run, and it pays two kinds of grant: an Emergency Assistance Payment (EAP) for day-to-day essentials, and an Individual Assistance Payment (IAP) for household goods. Neither has to be paid back. Unlike the council-run schemes in England and Scotland, the DAF is one national scheme. NEC Software Solutions UK (previously Northgate Public Services) runs it on behalf of the Welsh Government, with Family Fund Trading Limited and Wrexham County Borough Council as lead partners, and a network of approved partners such as councils, housing associations and charities who can apply for people. The Welsh Government describes it as a fund of last resort, and its application form warns that money is limited, so a grant cannot be made in every case. The scale is large: between April 2025 and March 2026 it approved 220,000 payments worth £31,062,000, and its budget for 2025/26 was £39.5 million.

An Emergency Assistance Payment is money for essential costs when you are in extreme financial hardship. The scheme's own examples are food, gas, electricity, heating oil and emergency travel, and its statistics also list clothing. It is meant for a one-off crisis, such as losing your job or waiting for your first benefit payment, so it cannot be used for ongoing bills you cannot afford, and the application form says it cannot be used for rent or debt payments. You can apply for one yourself, and you do not need to be on a benefit. An Individual Assistance Payment helps you, or someone you care for, live independently in your home or a home you are moving into, and it is given as goods, not cash: white goods such as a fridge or washing machine, supplied by AO Retail Limited, and furniture such as beds, sofas and chairs, supplied by The Furnishings Service. A Welsh Government freedom of information reply confirms that the DAF does not give cash or vouchers for furniture or white goods; the item itself is delivered. An IAP needs a qualifying benefit and has to be applied for through an approved partner. The two differ a lot in size: between September 2025 and March 2026 there were 122,200 EAPs averaging £84 and 7,000 IAPs averaging £1,220. The table further down sets them side by side.

To get an Emergency Assistance Payment you must live in Wales, be 16 or over (there is no upper age limit), and have no other money you can use, such as savings. You must also be in extreme financial hardship, facing an unexpected crisis that has left you without money for food, gas, electricity or other essentials, and need help straight away. The scheme gives losing your job, and waiting for the first payment of a benefit you have claimed, as typical examples. Your identity is checked against Department for Work and Pensions records, and the application form says the benefits you are on are checked with the DWP too. Three extra rules apply in particular cases. Heating oil can only be applied for through an approved partner, and in March 2026 the Welsh Government temporarily raised the most it will pay for heating oil from £500 to £750 per award, and allowed two heating oil awards in a rolling 12 months at least three months apart, while prices are inflated; ask a partner whether that uplift still applies. Since 1 July 2025, someone fleeing domestic abuse who applies for an EAP for the first time with an approved partner's support can get an enhanced payment of £111. And since July 2025, an award under £100 can be paid by bank transfer instead of a mobile phone voucher. The scheme's pages do not publish a standard EAP amount: what you get depends on your need.

An Individual Assistance Payment can only be applied for by an approved partner on your behalf, such as a support worker, housing officer or social worker registered with the scheme. You must live in Wales, be 16 or over, have no access to other money, and have tried all other affordable sources of funding, such as a credit union. You must be getting Universal Credit, Income Support, income-based Jobseeker's Allowance, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, or the Guarantee Credit part of Pension Credit. And you must be in one of five situations: leaving a care home or institution, such as a hospital, prison or foster carer, after at least 3 months, to live independently; wanting to stay living in the community rather than go into a hospital or care home; setting up home after an unsettled way of life; needing to move quickly because of a relationship breakdown or domestic violence; or taking on the care of a prisoner or young offender released on temporary licence. You cannot get one while living in a care home or prison unless you are being discharged within 6 weeks, or as a member of a fully maintained religious order, and the application form warns that savings or capital held by you or your partner may make you ineligible. Two changes took effect on 1 July 2025. A person fleeing domestic abuse no longer needs a means-tested benefit to get an IAP. And exceptional items, flooring or a heated air dryer applied for through a partner, were opened to people getting Attendance Allowance, alongside those getting the enhanced mobility rate of PIP or Disability Living Allowance, where there is a medical need directly linked to the item.

The Welsh Government's apply page sets two limits. You cannot apply if you have received a grant in the last 7 days, or if you have already received 3 grants in the last 12 months. Those 12 months roll: they are counted back from the day you apply, not by calendar year or tax year, so an award you got last October still counts against you this September. The paper application form and a 2025 freedom of information reply both describe the 3-in-12-months limit as an Emergency Assistance Payment rule, and the form adds a condition for both grants: do not apply for the same things within 28 days of an earlier application unless something has changed. The limit has changed before. Until April 2023 there were two sets of rules: people in qualifying categories introduced for the Covid-19 pandemic and the loss of the £20 a week Universal Credit uplift could get up to 5 Emergency Assistance Payments in 12 months, while everyone else had 3. From 1 April 2023 one limit of 3 applied to everyone. Heating oil has its own rule, announced as temporary in March 2026: up to two heating oil awards in a rolling 12 months, at least three months apart. The limits count grants you received, not applications you made, so a refused application does not use up one of your three. Check before you apply whether an earlier grant falls inside the 12 months: the review guidance only allows a review where these basic limits were met.

There are four routes. Most people apply online through the Welsh Government's DAF service: between May 2024 and April 2025, 99% of people who received an award got it that way. You can also apply by phone on 0800 859 5924, open 10am to 4pm, Monday to Friday, or by post to Discretionary Assistance Fund, PO Box 2377, Wrexham, LL11 0LG, using the paper form, which can only be sent in hard copy. The fourth route is an approved partner: someone working for a council, housing association, charity or advice agency, such as Citizens Advice, who has registered with the scheme and holds an approved partner code. A partner is the only way to apply for an Individual Assistance Payment or for heating oil, and the online service only lets partners apply for someone else, although the paper form lets a representative, such as someone with power of attorney, apply with your signed consent. Before you start, have ready your National Insurance number, details of the money you receive, contact details for anyone helping you, something to prove who you are, and any documents about your situation, such as a police incident number if you have reported a crime. The paper form also asks for bank details in every case, for fraud checks. Explain clearly what the money is for, what unexpected cost you faced and why it was unexpected, because those are the questions the form asks. The processing office is closed on bank holidays: you can still apply online, but nothing is processed until the next working day. Calls and letters in Welsh are welcome.

An Emergency Assistance Payment application made Monday to Friday takes 24 hours to process, but if you apply after 12pm on a Friday you will not hear until the following Monday. An Individual Assistance Payment takes 10 working days. Either way you get a letter, by email or post, telling you whether you have been approved. To check progress yourself, use the Welsh Government's DAF tracking service, linked from its Track your application page. It tells you whether your application has been approved and when you will be paid, and partners can use it to check applications they made for someone else. You need two things: the applicant's surname, and the tracking reference number you were given when you applied, a mix of numbers and letters such as 10405851hkXyBK. For anything the tracker cannot answer, the DAF's customer help line is 0800 859 5924. An approved Emergency Assistance Payment is paid as a PayPoint voucher, sent to the mobile number you gave, or as a bank transfer. The Welsh Government's statistics note that an EAP can be claimed up to 30 days after approval and an IAP up to 60 days, so do not leave a voucher unused. For an Individual Assistance Payment, the supplier contacts you by phone, text or email to arrange delivery, and its details are in your letter. Allow 24 hours after approval before contacting the supplier yourself.

Ask for a review. The Welsh Government's review guidance says you can request one within 20 days of receiving your decision, by emailing DAF.Feedback@necsws.com, writing to the PO Box 2377 address in Wrexham, or phoning 0800 859 5924, and you can add information you left out of the original application. An approved partner, or someone you nominate such as a support worker, can ask for you. You can only ask if you met the basic rules: fewer than 3 awards in a rolling 12 months, no award in the last 7 days, aged 16 or over and living in Wales, and identity verified against DWP records. Grounds include being refused because the criteria were not met, new information or a change of circumstances that could change the decision, or being given the wrong type of award, such as goods when you expected cash. There are three stages, taken in order. At Tier 1, a member of NEC Software Solutions UK's staff reviews the application, aiming to finish within 24 hours for an EAP and 15 working days for an IAP. If you are still unhappy, you have 20 working days from the Tier 1 decision to ask for Tier 2, an independent external review by Family Fund Business Services. The last stage is a complaint to the Welsh Government, on 0300 060 4400 (8.30am to 5pm, Monday to Friday) or at customerhelp@gov.wales. A complaint about poor service is separate: the DAF asks you not to use its complaints route to challenge a decision.

No. A DAF grant is not a loan, so nothing is ever deducted from your Universal Credit to repay it, and the law keeps it out of your award in two ways. First, it is local welfare provision. Regulation 2 of the Universal Credit Regulations 2013 defines that as occasional financial or other help given by a local authority, the Scottish Ministers or the Welsh Ministers, or a person providing a service to them, either to meet an immediate short-term need arising from an exceptional event or circumstances, or to help someone set up or keep a settled home. The DAF is funded by the Welsh Government and delivered on its behalf, and its two grants match those two purposes. Paragraph 18A of Schedule 10 to the same Regulations disregards, as capital, "a payment received within the past 12 months by way of local welfare provision". That paragraph was added on 4 May 2022 by SI 2022/448, and DWP's guidance for its decision makers repeats it. Second, it is never income: regulation 66 lists every kind of unearned income Universal Credit counts, and local welfare provision is not on the list. The capital point only matters if your savings are near the limits, because Universal Credit ignores capital below £6,000 and ends entitlement above £16,000; the savings and capital calculator works through yours. Do not confuse a DAF grant with a Universal Credit advance, which is a loan usually repaid from your payments within 24 months, as the guide to deductions and advances explains.

The DAF does not pay rent, so extra help with housing costs in Wales comes from a different scheme: a Discretionary Housing Payment. These are run by each of Wales's 22 local authorities, are open to both social and private tenants, and give money on top of the benefits you already get, so apply to your own council. They still exist in Wales under that name, because the change that replaced Discretionary Housing Payments with the Crisis and Resilience Fund from April 2026 applies to England only. If the housing element guide points you to a Discretionary Housing Payment for a rent shortfall, that advice still holds in Wales. In England, both Discretionary Housing Payments and the Household Support Fund became the Crisis and Resilience Fund, run by each council with its own rules, which the Crisis and Resilience Fund guide covers. In Scotland, the equivalent of the DAF is the Scottish Welfare Fund, which pays Crisis Grants and Community Care Grants through councils, with decision deadlines set in law: see the Scottish Welfare Fund guide. Northern Ireland is the odd one out, because its Discretionary Support, run by the Finance Support Service, can be an interest-free loan rather than a grant; the Universal Credit in Northern Ireland guide covers it. The Welsh Government warns that DAF figures are not directly comparable with any of these schemes, because their aims and eligibility rules differ. Which scheme you use depends on where you live.