The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) is again in the spotlight for an administration error, this time over a reason for declining Special Needs Grant applications for help with food.<\/p>\n
A 1 News investigation has found the ministry told more than 8000 people that food was not an essential need over six years<\/a>.<\/p>\n The ministry has put that down to selecting the wrong category when processing the application.<\/p>\n MSD group general manager of client service delivery Graham Allpress said applicants being told food was not an essential need was an administrative error.<\/p>\n “Where the code was entered, it does not mean the underlying decision was incorrect, but selecting this category was an administrative error,” Allpress said.<\/p>\n The wrong decline code had affected 0.094 percent of applicants, with MSD processing more than 8.5 million applications over that six year time period.<\/p>\n The 1 News story also found the total number of declined applications had increased in the past two years.<\/p>\n Allpress told 1 News the ministry’s eligiblity criteria had not changed, and MSD continued to approve the vast majority (94 to 96 percent) of food grant applications.<\/p>\n “Before Covid-19, managers were required to approve some hardship grants. These requirements were temporarily waived during the Covid-19 response, but this was never intended to be permanent,” he said.<\/p>\n Documents 1 News received under the Official Information Act also showed 318,930 individuals asked for food grants in 2025 alone. On average, each person asked for help around four times, giving a total of 1.4 million applications.<\/p>\n Overall, 88,000 Special Needs Grant applications were declined.<\/p>\n Reasons for declining grants for food included “you do not have an immediate need” or “you have caused or contributed to your immediate need”.<\/p>\n Others were told their “circumstances could have been reasonably foreseen”, which was applied to more than 18,000 applications.<\/p>\n While most applications are approved, Labour said the increase in people needing support was a consequence of National making life more expensive.<\/p>\n “No one chooses to go hungry. Food is a basic necessity, and it is shameful that so many Kiwis are being left without enough of it,” said Labour’s social development spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime.<\/p>\n Social Development Minister Louise Upston said MSD continued to provide Special Needs Grants for food to hundreds of thousands of eligible New Zealanders.<\/p>\n “Through Budget 2026 we have enabled $45 million for community food support to assist those in highest need,” she said.<\/p>\n “For the first time ever,\u202fI have secured baselined funding to maintain existing community food distribution infrastructure at the current level, and an additional investment of $7 million for community food providers, such as foodbanks, in 2026\/27.”<\/p>\n Upston said funding for Kick Start Breakfasts had additionally been secured, which currently provided breakfast to 46,000 children.<\/p>\n Upston and MSD have already apologised for two administrative errors, which saw people’s Winter Energy Payments<\/a> and benefits wrongly suspended<\/a>.<\/p>\n The review into that matter is due later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) is again in the spotlight for an administration error, this time over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-593042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}