The Living Wage Foundation’s Life on Low Pay 2025 report has painted a stark picture of life for millions across the UK. More than 4.5 million workers earn below the real Living Wage and over half of low-paid parents have turned to food banks in the past year just to get by.
Behind these statistics are parents skipping meals so their children can eat, people living in unheated homes, and workers taking on extra hours just to stay afloat. Rising housing costs, high inflation, and a lack of savings have left many households without any safety net. For some, one unexpected bill - a broken boiler, a missed benefit payment - can tip everything over the edge.
For local councils, this reality is impossible to ignore. It’s reflected in every phone call from a resident asking for food support, every referral for debt advice, and every family seeking help with rent or childcare. And yet, even when help exists, too many people still struggle to find it. Support services are often scattered across outdated websites, local directories, or social media pages - making the process slow, frustrating, and overwhelming at a time when people need clarity the most.
That’s exactly the problem Innate Needs set out to solve.
Making help easier to find
Innate Needs is the UK’s largest open-access map of community support, with nearly 13,000 listings and growing. From food banks and warm spaces to financial advice, mental health support, and community events, the platform brings together services from councils, charities, and grassroots groups - all in one searchable, easy-to-use place.
And now, it’s completely free for everyone. Councils that partner with us cover the cost of listings for their area, meaning local organisations, no matter their size, can appear on the map without fees or admin barriers. This ensures residents see a complete, accurate picture of what’s available nearby, not just what’s funded locally.
The benefits for councils
Partnering with Innate Needs helps councils save time, reduce duplication, and stretch their signposting budgets further. It replaces the need for fragmented local directories with one reliable national tool that can be updated directly by organisations themselves. It also helps overcome geographic ringfencing - giving residents visibility of nearby services beyond council borders and promoting collaboration across communities.
Bringing it all together
The Life on Low Pay report highlights a cycle of hardship made worse by inaccessibility - people forced to skip meals, fall behind on bills, or work longer hours because they can’t reach the right support when they need it. Innate Needs helps to break that cycle. By giving clear visibility of local help - food banks, debt advice, warm spaces, and more - it connects people with the lifelines that already exist but are too often hidden from view.
No family should face poverty alone. No resident should spend hours searching for help that’s just down the road. And no council should have to maintain multiple disconnected systems to achieve what we can do together.
If you work in social care, community services, housing, or signposting, we’d love to hear from you. Together we can make finding help as easy as it should be and make sure fewer families are left behind.
Get in touch: partnerships@innateneeds.org.
