Food banks are running out of supplies as 320,000 people have turned to them for help in the last six months alone, a leading charity has revealed.
Need is now exceeding donations for the first time, the Trussell Trust said, with one in five individuals referred to its network now coming from working households and more emergency parcels given out than ever before.
There has been a 40 per cent increase in the number of new users in the past six months, compared to the same period the year before.
The Independent’s Feed the Future campaign is calling on the government to extend free school meals to all children living in poverty in England, as parents increasingly turn to food banks for help during the holidays.
Food banks said that this “winter will be the hardest yet” and warned that stock levels were running low. One single mother told The Independent that she was “trying to sell stuff all the time, just to find £10”. Another said she had joined local clubs to have a place to keep warm and get a free cup of tea.
On Wednesday, the education minister Gillian Keegan was challenged on what is being done to help the increasing number of children in poverty who do not qualify for free school meals.
Pressed on expanding the scheme to include more schoolchildren, Ms Keegan refused to discuss changes in any depth, instead telling Radio 4’s Today programme that the issue is “always under review”.
The number of children who qualify for free school meals has jumped to nearly 2 million this year.
“Free school meals has been something that I was looking at recently, and actually it’s gone up by 300,000 in just the last couple of years,” she said. “So it’s actually the largest cohort of children who now receive free school meals – about 1.9 million, more than a third of children.”
The Liberal Democrats accused the Conservatives of being “missing in action” as it was revealed that more full-time workers are struggling to afford food.
Ayesha*, a single mum-of-three, who runs her own cleaning business has turned to North Kensington Community Kitchen for help.
On good weeks she has around £20-30 a week for food, but there are some weeks when she has nothing.
“Everything is more expensive, especially in terms of buying food, nappies, baby milk,” she said.
“I am on a pre-pay energy meter and I find I am having to top up every few days. It used to be once a week, now it’s every two or three days.”
She no longer uses her oven as much and tries to get out of the house to save on electricity.
“I go to lots of playgroups as much as I can to get out of the house. There I can use their facilities to charge my phone, charge my battery packs, and use the internet,” she said.
Faith Angwet, 37, from Southwark, said she was joining local community groups to keep warm and get a cup of tea.
“One week’s shop used to cost me around £40. Now it costs £70, and I’ve omitted items,” she said.
Ms Angwet has a son aged five and a daughter aged 2. She received free school meal vouchers over the holidays and visited the local community hub to receive frozen meals for her family.
“I have to go the food bank from time to time when sudden bills come up. Last week my washing machine stopped working all of a sudden and I had to cought up £200 which I didn’t have,” she said.
There are times when she has no money left for travel at the end of the month and she has to get on the bus without paying the fair, she added.
Lowri Williams, 51, who lives near Blackpool, turned to food banks after losing her audiovisual company five years ago.
“I’ve been living day to day. I literally don’t have enough money coming in to cover all the bills at the moment. I can’t look to the future. It’s horrendous,” she said.
One of the hardest things is not being able to buy things for her 13-year-old daughter Ms Williams said. “The other day we were out and about, she wanted a snack and I had no money at all.
“I’m a month from Christmas with no money. We’re not living, we’re literally being crushed every day. Rishi Sunak will never know what it is like to put your hand in your pocket and not be able to find £10.”
The Trussell Trust warned that food banks are at “breaking point” due to a “tsunami of need” driven by the cost of living crisis.
Josie Barlow, food bank manager at Bradford Foodbank, said: “Someone who came to the food bank recently told me that ‘buying milk is a luxury now’.”
Food banks are facing challenges of their own with people reducing their charitable giving to safeguard their finances.
“We have seen a huge increase in people coming to the food bank in the last two months compared with the same period last year and our stock levels are very low for this time of the year,” Mr Barlow added.
Charlotte Hill, CEO of The Felix Project, a charity that delivers surplus food to charities and schools, said its members were “crying out” for more food.
“We have hundreds more new charities and schools contacting us asking for help,” she said.
Emma Revie, chief executive at the Trussell Trust, said: “We are calling for the prime minister to act decisively in next week’s Budget. As well as ensuring that benefits rise with inflation as soon as possible, this must go further to close the gap between price rises and incomes over the winter.”
Liberal Democrat MP, Wendy Chamberlain, said that it was “unacceptable that families and pensioners are having to rely on the kindness of their community”.
She added: “This is an emergency, but the Conservatives are missing in action.”
A government spokesman said they were directly supporting households in need with cost of living payments.
They added: “Our extensive immediate support for families also includes our energy price guarantee, saving around £700 for a typical household over winter, and our household support fund, worth over £1bn to help people with essential costs, combined with longer-term changes such as altering universal credit to help people keep £1,000 more of what they earn every year.”
*Name has been changed.
