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Council is making headway on reducing child poverty
North Ayrshire Council’s ambitious drive to reduce the number of children living in poverty is having an impact – but much more work still needs to be done.
In June 2023, Cabinet approved the Child Poverty Action Plan 2023-26 - a joint plan involving various partners which is a statutory requirement of the Scottish Government.
The Progress Report on this for 2024-25 was recently presented to Cabinet and highlights action that has been taken throughout the year based on the three key drivers of child poverty - income from employment, income from social security and the cost of living.
In June, the End Child Poverty coalition, which is made up of more than 130 organisations including child welfare groups and social justice groups, released its most recent child poverty data for all UK local authorities.
Encouragingly, this showed that levels of child poverty in North Ayrshire have fallen significantly. The analysis shows the child poverty level (after housing costs) in North Ayrshire has reduced to 24.3 per cent in 2023-24 against a national average of 23 per cent.
In 2022-23 North Ayrshire had the second-highest rate of child poverty in Scotland, but this reduction was the most significant improvement of all Scottish local authorities.
Tackling child poverty represents a key pillar in the Council’s priority of transitioning to a wellbeing economy in a way that improves the quality of life for local people.
Quote: Working in partnership with key community organisations to substantially reduce child poverty further continues to be a top priority for us as a local authority. There are many factors to consider when we plan this work, and we are putting communities and residents at the heart of what we do as we can only make a difference by taking people’s lived experience on board and listening to what families and young people are telling us. There is a lot of great work being done – and it is important for us to acknowledge this – and we are moving in the right direction. However, this is a challenging and complex issue and we cannot afford to be complacent when our residents’ quality of life is at stake.
Quote from: Councillor Marie Burns, Leader of North Ayrshire Council
As the Cost-of-Living Crisis continues, Council teams are working hard - in partnership with public, private and Third Sector groups and our communities - to meet national targets in challenging circumstances.
A key development has been the introduction of a Child Poverty Strategy Team (CPST) to the Council at the start of 2025 to oversee all work in this area. Other key actions, some of which have strong connections with national policy, include:
- the expanded delivery of free school meals
- the rebranding and launch of welfare rights and money advice service Money Matters as Money Smart – which helps boost residents’ income. This secured more than £27.2 million from 7,233 referrals in 2024-25
- hosting of the third annual Employability Week – which helps residents access new training and work opportunities through a jobs fair and recruitment sessions and
- making progress across national programmes such as the Collaboration for Health Equity in Scotland and the Fairer Futures Partnership.
Rates of child poverty are lower in Scotland than they are across the UK overall, with a key element of this being attributed to the impact of the Scottish Child Payment.
The six priority groups in need of support are: lone parents; families with three or more children; families where the youngest child is under a year old; mothers aged under 25; households where someone has a disability and minority ethnic families.
Cabinet met recently and agreed to the report being published and shared with the Scottish Government.
Published: 18 September 2025