At 7.40am, when Charlotte White, the Earlsfield food bank manager, arrives for work, people are already waiting outside the redbrick building of St Andrew’s church in south-west London.
When she opens the doors a couple of hours later, many of the faces in the queue snaking out of the gate and down the road are new since the Observer last visited in December. But not Lofe Chabal, who is near the front.
Then, the 29-year-old, who has multiple sclerosis and uses a mobility scooter, was struggling without hot water after his boiler broke. Today, he says he has been “up and down”, forming a rollercoaster trail with his hand. Having spent much of winter sleeping, he says, “I’m not a quitter”.
In December, staff at the food bank thought the situation couldn’t get any worse. Demand for the service in Earlsfield was at a record high, queues were forming outside and guests were freezing in dark homes, going without food for days. At the time, one guest said he and his two daughters were living on £4 a month after being subjected to benefit sanctions.
But five months on from the Observer’s special report on Food bank Britain, dependence on the facility has soared. In March, for the first time, the number of households being helped per month rose above 200 – at its peak reaching 120 a week. The monthly figure for March 2022 was 126.
Despite spring’s warmer months, there is no sign of pressures easing. “If you look at how the cost of things is going up, it’s getting worse and problems are mounting,” says White.
Demand is now so high that staff have had to reassess the services they offer. Earlier this month, guests were told that a cooked breakfast would no longer be provided – costs and numbers have made it impractical – and recently an ambulance had to be called because a woman hit her head as people rushed forward to get in.
An NHS emergency department medical assistant, whose identity we are protecting, recently started going to the food bank to help with additional food supplies for his daughter. “I don’t want her to feel neglected or that I cannot provide.”
At work, he says, senior staff members are bringing in extra food to ensure lower-paid juniors can get the nourishment they need to get through long days in A&E.
It comes after the Observer revealed in February that more people than ever are depending on food banks in Britain – including pensioners, NHS staff and teachers.
Guests at Earlsfield now include numerous NHS staff from the nearby St George’s hospital in Tooting – including administrators, people working in trauma and department managers – as well as young children, people in employment and, increasingly, homeowners.
Distributed across the tables where guests wait to place their orders are notices of the planned changes to the cafe. From next month, the cooked breakfasts will be replaced by hot drinks and pastries.
“It will be a big blow because a lot of people come here for a proper breakfast,” says guest Annmarie Carty, 51. “What do they expect people to do?”
Since we last spoke in December, the mother of two teenagers says food and other essentials have become more and more expensive. In the pound shop, she used to buy four toilet rolls for that pound; now she can only get two. “It’s not really a pound shop any more,” she says.
Carty would love to take her children to a theme park or somewhere where they could “just go and be happy”, but her finances won’t stretch. She has recently found joy in sewing, and shows me a heart-decorated bag that she made from old material.
In December, Odaine Rochester, 36, had just received a benefit sanction for the third time after missing a job centre appointment because of a cycle accident. He has since been sanctioned a further three times. While he doesn’t put all the blame on the government, he says he’s had a series of mishaps, and it doesn’t take much to upset the balance.
The father said it has had a huge impact on his life. “You could save up all year, little pennies here and there, and then just be back at square one. So I’m kind of there.” Living with family and using the food bank, he says: “I’m literally squeezing through.”
His neighbour, Johnathan Webb, 55, who is at the food bank with his two-year-old son, Toby, says he doesn’t have enough money to get by. “We’re just living to pay bills,” says Webb, who is not working due to sickness and receives benefits. “There’s no enjoyment. You wake up depressed. You wake up wondering where the next meal for your children is going to come from.”
He wants to see the gap between the rich and poor closed and more government action on energy company profits. “There used to be a term, the trickle down effect. We’re not seeing any of that.”
The food bank continues to serve several Ukrainian refugees. Petro Chornii, 66, who is disabled, escaped Kyiv in March last year. He receives government help, but once he has paid for rent and energy bills he says there is very little left.
Sitting with two of her grandchildren, who are drawing at a table, Jennifer Harvey says she first started coming to the food bank in November. Despite cutting back on everything they could, income was not meeting the cost of basics.
Harvey, 58, stopped working full-time as an education specialist two years ago to help her daughter, who has three young children. “It just got to a stage where there was no longer a food shop.” Her daughter, who she says was “stick thin”, was skipping meals to make sure they could get through the week.
But she is determined they will find a way through. “She will get out of it, and we will come back and volunteer, we’ll support people, to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen.”
