‘A failure of British society’: Food bank use spirals as hunger becomes entrenched

Steve, a 44-year-old who lives in the West London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, volunteers one day a week at a local food bank that gives out free groceries. He sits inside the door and welcomes people, some who may be nervous or embarrassed about seeking charity to help them eat.

He knows how they feel. Before he was a volunteer, he was a food bank user.

“You’ve seen the houses around here. This isn’t a poor area,” he says, as we sip coffee in a trendy cafe near Parsons Green. “But, sometimes, things just go wrong for people and they end up needing help.”

Even after Brexit, the UK’s economy is the sixth largest in the world. It is a wealthy, first world nation by any measure. It also, however, has a growing and entrenched hunger problem. New research this week from the Trussell Trust food bank charity shows that one in seven in Britain, or more than 11 million people, went hungry over the last year because they didn’t have enough money to buy food.

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About 7 per cent of British people rely on charities, such as food banks, to eat properly. With food inflation still above 18 per cent and another recession potentially on the way due to rocketing interest rates, Britain’s hunger problem may get even worse.

“It is a failure of our society,” says Emma Revie, chief executive of the Trussell Trust. Demand at its 1,400 food banks has more than doubled in five years.

Revie says Britain doesn’t really have a food problem. Rather, too many people end up skipping meals so they can afford other essentials, such as light and heat. “It’s really an income problem,” she says.

Steve, who lives alone, used to work for a local council. His problems began when he injured his back. The following year, he developed fibromyalgia, a condition which left him in chronic pain. He became depressed and turned to alcohol.

“Drink numbed it all,” he says.

Eventually, the pain and his addiction forced him to leave his job. He lived in a studio flat in West Kensington at the time, in 2014. The state paid him housing benefit but it fell £33 per week short of the rent. His basic rate of employment and support allowance was £72 per week. Once he made up the rent shortfall, it left him with £39 per week to pay all his bills and buy food.

Steve’s mother came up to London from the southwest town where he grew up to try to help him get back on his feet. She took him to an alcohol addiction service, which referred him to a food bank. Over the summer of 2014, he relied on it for food parcels. He moved to a cheaper flat within his housing benefits cap and, eventually, was approved for other benefits. As soon as he was back on his feet, he stopped using the food bank’s services and started volunteering.

Trussell Trust’s network of 1,400 food banks, more than half the UK’s total, are run by 435 separate charities that come together under its umbrella. Many are linked to churches. Support comes from supermarkets such as Tesco. Members of the public donate food to some food banks too. There is a shortfall however: the Trussell network buys 27 per cent of its food. Food banks have long been a feature of life in the United States but were unusual in the UK until Trussell was set up around 2010. That was the year the Conservative party under David Cameron first returned to power following the financial crisis and immediately implemented a regime of austerity.

There were deep cuts to many of the UK’s social services budgets. While Britain’s economy eventually started ticking back upwards so too did food bank use. A growing number of people at the bottom of the pile, the poorest with the lowest incomes, were left struggling to make ends meet.

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Trussell’s Hunger in the UK report this week shows that marginalised groups, such as the disabled, are the most likely to go without meals to make ends meet. Families with children and single parents living with their kids are also more likely to live in food insecurity compared to other people.

“The main driver is a lack of money. The social security system is failing to protect people,” says the trust. “The impact of having a lack of money leads to further issues such as worrying levels of social isolation and loneliness, spiralling debt and a decline in physical and mental health.”

The trust’s food banks gave out three million food parcels last year, up 120 per cent on 2017. Each parcel is meant to provide about three days’ worth of food, or about 10 meals. Revie says demand was up about 18 per cent this year until May.

While there is growing demand in London, the use of food banks is most acute in poorer areas outside of the capital. Trussell’s research shows one in four people have experienced hunger in the northeast, the area that includes Newcastle. This compares to one in seven nationally.

Meanwhile, there is serious concern over the growing use of food banks in Northern Ireland, where steep public budget cuts are being implemented as the region drifts with no government. Food bank use in the North is up 140 per cent over the last five years, compared to 120 per cent across the UK.

Service users are generally meant to be referred to a Trussell food bank by a third party, such as a citizens advice office. Many of the 1,200 independent food banks outside Trussell’s network take unreferred walk-ins. Critics of the food bank system say this can increase dependency on food handouts, which ultimately do not solve the problem of poverty.

Officially, state bodies such as jobcentres or social welfare departments do not refer people to food bank charities. Unofficially, food banks say the state does send people their way indirectly, while ostensibly upholding government policy to not make food charity part of the nation’s official policy.

Revie sees Trussell’s very existence as an indictment of the British social welfare system. The trust is lobbying for an “Essentials Guarantee”, whereby the UK government would legislate to ensure that a basic level of welfare income covers all essentials and is guaranteed for all. Trussell Trust estimates it would cost about £22 billion a year to implement.

“We have a benefits cap but there is no benefits floor. It would lift millions of families out of poverty,” says Revie. “People do everything to avoid going to a food bank, and our data shows they stop using it as soon as they can. The current cost of living crisis has been worse than the pandemic for food poverty. What will happen this winter [if fuel costs rise again]?”

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In the meantime, food bank volunteers and staff do what they can. On Tuesday, the Kingston food bank that is part of Trussell’s network opened to help people in the southwest London town, which also sits in another relatively affluent area.

“A quiet day is a good day,” says the bank’s director, Ian Jacobs. “We don’t celebrate busy days.”

The food bank, which is located inside the Everyday Church building on Union Street, opens at 11am. Service users with referrals arrive to collect vouchers for their food. There are also third party services on-site, such as citizens advice, who can refer people on the spot.

The bank runs a free cafe on-site, where people can grab a cup of coffee and a biscuit before collecting their food parcel. On Tuesday, a steady stream of people arrive to avail of the service. They include a couple of families with kids. Many food bank users in Kingston appear to be single men with complicated back stories that seem to include mental health issues.

One man, from Newcastle, tells a rambling story about how he had to leave his hometown due to a dispute with another man who raped his wife. In addition to his food parcel, he also collects a free bunch of flowers that was donated by a local supermarket.

Another man, Andy, who was once married to a woman from north Dublin, says he has to live on state benefits of £350 a month and uses the food bank to help him make ends meet.

Another user, Mark, is a bundle of nervous but friendly energy. He is waiting on his share of the sale of his father’s house. He lived with his Dad until he passed away last November. With the £70,000 he is due from the proceeds, he has already agreed a deal to buy a flat in a town near Leeds. He has no links to that part of England and his slightly dishevelled appearance begs the question as to whether he will have difficulties living on his own in an area where he has no roots or support network.

“I’ll be fine. Sure I can talk to anybody,” he says, flashing a broad smile.

The actual food bank facility is in a more private back room, off the main cafe-style area. The donated food includes tinned goods, soups, pasta, household and toiletry essentials, some fruit and vegetables and tea and coffee. It is all laid out on long tables.

Rather than being handed a predetermined parcel, service users with a shopping bag are taken around the tables by a volunteer who helps them choose what they want. The volunteers say it is more empowering for service users to be given some choice.

“All the sweetcorn is gone. It’s very popular these days,” one woman, a volunteer, says softly to a shuffling older man as she brings him around the tables.

As with Steve up in Fulham, some of the Kingston volunteers have experience of a food bank from the other side of the fence. One young woman, an asylum seeker from Iran who was sought by its security services after she took part in protests, uses the service to help make ends meet as she is not allowed to work. She explains she also has post-traumatic stress disorder.

[ UK inflation stuck at 8.7%, higher than forecast ]

“At least here I can do something useful,” she says.

Another volunteer, a woman from Israel, helps out each week at the food bank on her day off, before heading to her allotment to tend her own vegetables. She has a kind face and a gentle nature.

I ask her why she spends her free time helping other people who don’t have enough money to buy food. She pauses for a second and then leans in and whispers. “Because when I was growing up, I really could have done with being able to get help from a place such as this.”