Food banks across the UK are spending thousands on grocery bills due to a lack of fresh food supply, as demand begins to surge amid the cost-of-living crisis.
While the UK battles with rising food and energy prices, inflation, a falling pound and serious economic turmoil, operating costs for food banks will increase this year to around £400,000.
Charities are spending a monthly average of £5,000 on groceries to keep up with demand, twice as much as two years ago.
Operations manager at Kent-based Gillingham Street Angels food bank, Neil Charlick, said the number of people coming through its food bank on a monthly basis has doubled since last year.
“People need fresh food; they shouldn’t be living off beans on toast. You should have a balanced diet,” Charlick said.
“It used to be you could buy a tin of peas and other vegetables like that for really cheap. You can’t buy that anymore.”
Gillingham Street Angels is also seeing a decrease in public donations, contributing to the rise in its annual grocery bills.
Earlier this week, UK grocery inflation hit another record high of 13.9%, according to the latest data from market research firm Kantar.
Medway Food Bank, which is a part of the UK-wide Trussell Trust food bank network, has been spending up to £1,000 a week to buy food to make up for the shortfall in essential items during the pandemic.
“Whilst kind donations of food continue, in order to meet the increase in demand we will have to purchase even more and, with grocery prices spiralling, this is going to cost the food bank,” said a Medway fundraising manager.
“If we had a good harvest and Christmas, we would have enough food to see us through to the next harvest. But the problem now is that, even with huge donations at harvest and Christmas, it’s not going to last us anywhere near as long because we’re serving so many more families.”
