Pay rent, eat or keep warm? Growing numbers face hard choices as housing benefit gap grows

Food banks say many more people will be forced to rely on charity unless local housing allowance is more closely linked to rents. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer

Do you prioritise paying the rent, putting food on the table or keeping the house warm in winter? In practice, says Laura Braddock, a single mum from Wirral, Merseyside, you always pay the rent first and improvise the rest. “If I’ve got a roof over our head, then everything else I can muddle through.”

The pressing problem for Braddock, 39, is that muddling through is getting harder. The monthly rent for her two-bedroom flat far outstrips the local housing allowance (LHA) she receives – and the gap may widen.