110,000 Referred To Food Banks

The number of people in the UK receiving emergency food aid has almost doubled in the past six months, the country's largest organiser of food banks has reported.

Figures from the Trussell Trust, which operates 172 food banks and has a further 91 banks under development nationwide, show that nearly 110,000 adults and children were referred for emergency help by professionals such as the police, social workers and job centre advisors and GPs from April to September.

The trust operates a controlled voucher scheme in order to track referrals. It said that in the whole of the last financial year they fed 128,000 people.

Based on demand over the last six months, they expect that number to rise to more than 200,000 between 2012-13.

The trust's executive chairman, Chris Mould, said: "When you've got people who are on the margin of just making it and there's another price rise, another change in their outgoings, they can't negotiate [the change]... something gives, and it is going to be the food."

A breakdown of the figures also shows that while less than one percent of those being referred are pensioners, there appeared to be a prevalence of young teenagers and adults taking up emergency food aid.

14,500 people, 16% of all those being referred, were aged 16-24, a group that makes up around 11% of the UK population in total.

The trust's own indicators also show that the largest block of people were being left unable to feed themselves because of delays or a change in circumstances to their benefit claims.

Currently 45% of professionals referring families and adults for food packages cited troubles and delays with the benefits system, a figure that was up from around 40% on the year before and had more than doubled since the recession began in 2009.

Mould said that other reasons for hunger included debt and delayed wages; circumstances arising out of domestic violence and sickness, but that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) who are responsible for the benefits system needed to ask why so many people were being left hungry by bureaucratic failure; increased use of benefit sanctions; and the government's reform measures, which could require benefit claimants to switch to different types of benefits.

"The period in which people are left with no recourse to money and therefore an inability to get food on the table is longer," Mould said.

"The DWP should be deeply interested in what's driving and generating these crises. They really should be asking the question, is there anything we can do to resolve this and to reduce the prevalence, the occasions per month when this happens."

(H)