Equality and Poverty Performance 2024-25

The Socio-economic Duty came into force in Wales on 31 March 2021. The overall aim of the duty is to deliver better outcomes for those who experience socio-economic disadvantage.

In order to better understand inequalities of outcome and where they can have the greatest impact on reducing unequal outcomes as a result of socio-economic disadvantage, we access a range of national data reports and also gather evidence through the Public Services Board (PSB). A summary of the performance, evidence to support this and improvement actions from the Council’s annual self-assessment 2024-25 is provided below.

Q1: Assessment of current performance – how well are we doing?

Delivery of the Pembrokeshire Tackling Poverty Strategy published in early 2024 continues, led by the Poverty and Inequalities working group of the PSB. The sub-group meets regularly to oversee delivery of actions and to collaborate on delivery of grant funded projects.
Pembrokeshire’s second Poverty Summit held in April 2025, with a continued focus on exploring local issues and identifying creative solutions to combatting poverty in Pembrokeshire. Workshops were held to encourage attendees to consider positive action that can be taken to help resolve issues around poverty.
Following the 2024 Poverty Summit, feedback suggested that the event was quite hard-hitting in its main messaging. Many attendees did not initially realise the extent of poverty in Pembrokeshire. This year’s Summit took a more balanced approach, giving the message that whilst poverty was not going away, there is positive and proactive work that can be done to support and help people.
This years’ Summit included a presentation on the new LIFT (Low Income Family Tracker) Platform. This software was purchased in early 2025 and uses data from a number of sources to identify those who may not be claiming benefits they are entitled to, enabling the Council to pro-actively reach out to those people to support them with making a claim. The first campaign for the platform is currently being prepared.
A Communications and Collaboration Strategy is currently under development to ensure that people are aware of the LIFT Platform campaign. This includes engaging with elected Members and reassuring members of the public that the letters they may receive about this are genuine.
Based on actions within the Tackling Poverty Strategy, a lived experience sub-group is also being developed involving individuals affected by poverty, to examine and explore their experiences of accessing available support services and systems.
Particularly successful has been the People PWR welfare rights project aimed at` improving finances and improving futures of those disadvantaged. The project has received 506 referrals, with £261,834 financial gains generated for Pembrokeshire families (with families benefiting on average c£3,000). The project has also supported families with food bank referrals, fuel vouchers and help with accessing the Discretionary Assistance Fund.
We increased the uptake of universal free school meals for primary school aged children from 68% to 73%. This promotes healthy eating as well as tackling child poverty.
Most recent child poverty rates (opens in a new tab) are reported online. For Mid and South Pembrokeshire constituency area (the majority of Pembrokeshire) for 2023-24 relative poverty has increased to 26% up from 24.3% in 2022-23. This compares with figures of 21.8% for the UK and 24% for Wales. Whilst only a small part of Pembrokeshire is covered by the Ceredigion Preseli Parliamentary constituency, relative poverty data for this area is higher with a relative child poverty rate of 27.2%. Data for small areas shows that child poverty in 10 of Pembrokeshire’s 71 LSOAs, over a third of children are in relative poverty and that one LSOA, Garth 2, has a rate of 47.2% which is within the top 5% highest rates for LSOAs in the UK. Rates for each LSOAs in Pembrokeshire (and the rest of Wales and the United Kingdom) can be viewed via the link above.

Q2: Evidence – how do we know?

Q3: Improvement actions – what can we do better and how?

Review the Tackling Poverty Strategy on an annual basis to ensure the content is relevant and up to date and that the lived experiences of people are appropriately reflected.
Establish the lived experience sub-group and integrate recommendations from the group into the work of the Poverty and Inequalities working group.
Reflect on feedback from the 2025 Poverty summit before starting to plan for the next summit in 2026 to ensure the summit meets the needs of those working to support those in poverty in the county.
Further strengthen the membership of the Poverty Group by inviting representation from schools onto the group - school staff are often the first to see how poverty affects children and young people in our communities.

Strategic Equality Plan Annual Report 2024-2025