NEARLY three million food parcels were handed out by the foodbank charity Trussell within the 12 months to March — almost a million greater than five years previously.
Figures released by the charity on Wednesday of last week show that a million of the two.885 million parcels delivered between April 2024 and March 2025 were for kids — a 51 per cent increase on 2019/20. About one third (32 per cent) were for under-fives.
The overall figure represents a decrease of about eight per cent since 2023/24, nevertheless, when food parcel deliveries peaked at 3.1 million — a post-pandemic jump of greater than 1.2 million (News, 17 May 2024). Trussell says that this didn’t indicate reduced need.
Families are probably the most common recipients, it reports, because it continues to report that folks are skipping meals to feed their children, and persons are eating their food parcels on the foodbank, due to “desperate” hunger.
Andrew, 44, from Fife, is a single father with a young daughter. He was 34 when his autoimmune condition forced him to stop work. His social-security payments are sometimes not enough to get by, he says, and he has been living off foodbanks.
“When the doctor said I couldn’t work, it felt like my purpose had gone,” he said. “I do what I can to make ends meet. I be sure that my daughter doesn’t see that I’m recurrently skipping meals in order that she will be able to eat. I eat whatever is left on her plate when she’s finished. I lost almost two stone last 12 months through not eating enough.
“Poverty isn’t nearly money — it’s the constant stress of attempting to survive.”
Karen Burgon, chief executive at Leeds North and West Foodbank, said that donations weren’t maintaining with demand. “We’re seeing really high numbers of families, disabled people, working people, and older people, struggling to afford the essentials. Food donations will not be maintaining with the extent of need we’re seeing, and that is putting us under a variety of strain.
“We have found ourselves spending as much as £12,000 every month to complement the donations we receive, which is an actual worry to us as we anticipate much more people needing our support within the 12 months ahead. It’s not right that anyone must be forced to show to charity for emergency food.”
The recent figures must be a “wake-up call” for the Government to take motion, Trussell’s chief executive, Emma Revie, said. “An entire generation has now grown up in a rustic where sustained high levels of foodbank need feel just like the norm. This must be an enormous wake-up call to government and a stark reminder of their responsibilities to the people of this country.”
She called on the Government to reverse its “harmful policy decisions on disability advantages and housing support”, and to indicate “greater ambition” on the forthcoming child-poverty strategy and the long run of local crisis support.
“It is obvious that the general public’s cost-of-living fears are removed from over, and these numbers show why. If the UK Government truly wants to enhance public services, boost the economy, and make the UK a greater place to live, then addressing hunger and hardship should be a priority.”
Trussell estimates that hunger and hardship within the UK — through which the median, it says, is between “deep poverty” and “very deep poverty” — is costing the Government £75 billion a 12 months in additional public services and other costs (News, 2 May).
