Challenge Poverty Week

by Emma Jackson, CAS Assistant Director (Policy and Research).

This article was first published in The Herald on 10 October 2026.

This weekend marks the end of Challenge Poverty week. For over two decades campaigners, local authorities, faith groups, businesses, schools and colleges, trade unions and charities have come together to unite around one clear message – poverty has no place in a just and compassionate Scotland. 

The brutal impact that poverty has on people and places is known all too well by the expert advisers across the Citizens Advice network in Scotland. More than half of the near 200,000 people we support each year live in the most deprived communities in Scotland. People facing impossible choices as incomes do not cover the cost of the essentials that we all need. Failed by the structures and systems supposed to catch people at times of crisis. People like Fraser. 

Fraser left his job to become his wife’s full-time carer after she had a stroke – with their lives changing dramatically overnight. Difficulties in accessing disability payments alongside rising living costs, meant they could no longer afford to eat well and have the heating on. A life neither of them expected to be navigating.  

Challenge Poverty weeks brings into focus the not just the hardship that people are forced to endure, but the solutions available to us to build a society where all of us can live decent and dignified lives. Opportunities exist to take meaningful action on key issues including social security, energy, housing and public debt.  

The same systems that push people into debt and destitution could provide the firm foundation we all need to live free from poverty if we repaired them. Adequate social security payments, energy costs that are affordable, safe, secure and sustainable homes. These are the kind of solutions that would enable us to take meaningful strides to really challenge poverty.  

And the good news – this is what people across Scotland want too. Recent polling for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation demonstrated that more than 4 in 5 people (83%) agreed that reducing child poverty should be one the Scottish Governments top priorities. This should compel the First Minister to go further and faster with the action needed to meet the Scottish Parliament's 2030 Child Poverty targets.  

To realise change that delivers meaningful and lasting outcomes for people, collaboration is key. Poverty is a problem that demands action from local, Scottish and the UK Government. Everyone opportunity to make a difference to people’s lives should be seized. 

The UK Government’s Autumn budget presents an opportunity to make rents more affordable for the thousands of low-income renters in receipt of housing benefit across Scotland. Ending the freeze of local housing allowance rates and bringing these in line with at least 30% of real rents would make the cost of home significantly more affordable.  

Challenge Poverty week provides a vision for Scotland that all of us can come around. It reminds us that collective action anchored in justice and compassion can be the catalyst for change. The challenge before us, and more importantly decision makers, is to take the urgency and ambition from a campaign week and use that to transform people's lives, local communities and our society for the long term.