Fair By Design’s lived experience advisory group meets for the first time
28th April 2025 – there’s a feeling of excited tension as Fair By Design and Poverty Alliance staff log into a Teams meeting room at 9:45. It’s not often a Monday morning meeting has us excited, but this one feels a little different.
As the clock ticks over to 10:00, 15 people join the call and meet each other for the first time – these 15 people are our new lived experience advisory group. The group will draw on their experience of the poverty premium – the extra costs faced by people on low incomes – to help guide our work.
Over the course of two hours, everyone introduces themselves, we hear what has made people smile in the last week and get to know each other’s pets. Shared values and motivations for taking part come to the fore as we discuss the purpose of this group.
It’s clear there is a feeling of frustration, and sadness at other panel members’ difficulties with benefits and companies who haven’t supported them in the way they should have. But overwhelmingly, there’s a shared sense that things need to change.
Who’s around the table
The panel is made up of 15 people from across Great Britain, with representation from England, Wales and Scotland.
It includes a diverse range of people to ensure those most disproportionately affected by the poverty premium are represented. We know that some communities are particularly at risk of paying a poverty premium for household essentials, so we’ve made sure that there’s good representation from those communities on our panel.
The aim is to create a safe, supportive and collaborative environment where everyone feels empowered to contribute their experience and knowledge of poverty-related issues.
Support and training will be provided to help build confidence in speaking up – whether to politicians, the media, or in meetings.
Panel members are being reimbursed for their time, with options on how they receive this. We understand not everyone wants financial compensation, so other benefits are available. This is our way of recognising the value their lived expertise brings to our work.
What we’re going to do together
Over the next year, the panel will meet five times to help shape and guide our work. It will sit alongside our existing governance structures, our steering group and the Barrow Cadbury Trust Board.
The panel’s experience will input into all areas of our work. This will include helping us set priorities by identifying which issues are affecting people most, what we should focus on, and what we might be missing.
They will also help shape our policy work by advising where further research is needed and what type of work we should undertake.
In addition, panel members will guide our research by working alongside academics and staff from other organisations to help shape individual research projects.
We’ll also support those who are comfortable sharing their voices and lived expertise through blogs, videos, social media, media interviews, or public speaking.
Conclusion
We have a strong track record of working with people with lived experience in our communications and policy work. But we want to go further – making lived experience a central part of shaping our strategic work.
Over the next year, the voices and experiences of these 15 people will be at the heart of everything we do. Keep an eye on our work to see how their insight is helping shape change.
If you’d like to learn more about the process, or how to set up a similar panel, please get in touch.
