And so this is Christmas. And what have we done?
(Quite a lot, actually.)

2025 came in with a lot of promise.

We were six months into a new Government, with a Financial Inclusion Strategy on the horizon and mental health recognised as a cross-cutting theme. Ministers were talking seriously about tackling child poverty, and a new ten-year plan for the NHS was imminent.

But it also brought significant threats. Worrying rhetoric on benefits mounted at the start of the year, with cuts to vital disability benefits looking likely. And while media discourse about the ‘overdiagnosis’ of mental health problems increased, mental health continued to slide down the ministerial priority list.

For our team, it’s been a year of hard work – and a year of remarkable impact. Here are a few highlights.

Improving debt collection has been a major campaign priority for us for many years, and I’m hugely proud of the progress we saw in 2025. The Government responded to our campaign by launching a consultation on how to make council tax collection fairer. The Welsh Government went one step further, confirming plans to give people longer to pay and take other steps to make council tax collection fairer.

And finally, after years of campaigning alongside the debt advice sector, the Government committed to a statutory independent regulator for the enforcement industry (bailiffs). Now we just need to make sure parliamentary time is actually found to make it happen.

Our Gambling Harms Action Lab moved from design into delivery this year, with seven high street banks taking part. Meeting every six weeks, the cohort worked together with our lived experience community and expert team, drawing on insights from external speakers, to identify new systems, processes or tools they committed to piloting to better identify and support people experiencing gambling harm.

Several firms are focusing on how transaction data could be used proactively to identify those at risk. Next year we’ll begin scaling delivery plans and sharing learning across the sector. I hope 2026 is the year we collectively raise ambition for what banks can – and should – be doing in this area.

Early in the year, we were granted supercomplainant status by the Government. In practical terms, this gives us a stronger and more formal route to raise evidence of widespread harm directly with regulators. It strengthens our voice, and that of our Research Community.

Looking ahead, we’ll use this power selectively, focusing on issues where regulatory action can make the biggest difference. Watch this space for more in 2026.

Through our Mental Health Accessible programme, we continued to work in depth with banks, water companies and energy firms to improve products, processes and customer journeys for people with mental health problems.

This year that meant sustained engagement rather than one-off projects: understanding the challenges teams face and working with them to build internal buy-in for often ambitious change.

It also included a major publication on improving third-party access in financial services – how banks and building societies allow a nominated carer to help with financial tasks. While developing the research, we went under the bonnet at Nationwide to examine their third-party systems and work with them to make improvements. Beyond that immediate impact, the report helped secure mention of third-party tools in the Financial Inclusion Strategy as an ‘inclusive design’ feature that should be scaled across the industry.

One of the signs our work is, well, working, is seeing the links between money and mental health recognised in key strategies. This year we were delighted to see the government make mental health a major focus of the Financial Inclusion Strategy.

Practically, this means new work with the insurance industry to improve access to travel insurance for people with pre-existing conditions, a major banking initiative on accessible products building on our Mental Health Accessible programme, and wider efforts to improve access to affordable credit and savings. The strategy didn’t deliver everything we hoped for, but it represents real progress. Much is left to industry to deliver, and we’ll be working hard to hold them to account in 2026.

Integrating money and mental health services has long been a focus for us, and this year we took significant steps forward. With the support of Lord Bryn Davies, we secured Government commitments during the passage of the Mental Health Bill to embed financial difficulty into key mental health documents and processes. This means people are prompted to consider finances when planning future care or decision-making if they lose mental capacity.

We also saw progress on the mental health crisis breathing space scheme. It will now be offered automatically to people under longer-term sections and rolled out in Northern Ireland – a major success building on our earlier campaign.

Finally, the NHS ten-year plan committed to introducing Neighbourhood Health Centres, bringing debt advice and mental health services together under one roof. This has huge potential, and we’ll be working with the Department of Health to help ensure it’s realised.

Alongside a large coalition of charities, we helped secure a U-turn on proposals to cut disability benefits, which particularly threatened people with fluctuating or less visible conditions like mental health problems.

It was a major campaign win and a powerful example of what charities and MPs can achieve together. But it doesn’t feel like the danger has passed. The desire to cut disability benefits remains, and concerning rhetoric about mental health continues. We’ll be pressing on with this work in 2026.

We also saw big changes at Money and Mental Health Towers. We launched our new strategy with senior figures from government, regulators and industry – and we moved into a new office.

From driving the van to painting walls and assembling desks, it was very much a team effort. Seeing everyone work together to build a space that feels like ours was a genuine highlight of the year.

If 2025 has shown us anything, it’s that progress is possible – but not automatic. Every step forward this year has come from sustained, collective effort. We’ve had some shiny new innovations this year – our Action Lab and Supercomplainant status – but behind them what’s really driving the change is passion, commitment and hard work. And that’s exactly what you’ll see more of from us in 2026.