Your editorial (19 January) chimes with our charity’s recent experience of helping those who face an impossible choice between topping up the gas meter or putting food on the table.
Our fear is that the removal three months ago of the £20-a-week increase in universal credit, just as the cost of living began to rise sharply, has slammed shut the window of opportunity to continue reducing the need for food banks.
Members of Feeding Britain’s social supermarkets are already showing signs of distress. People who were shopping every couple of weeks for low-cost food are now doing so daily or weekly. Among those who relied only on the option of low-cost food, there is a growing need for the help we can offer with gas and electricity costs as well.
Two moves the government should make to rescue those households are to recalculate April’s benefit uprating so as to reflect the actual costs of living, rather than those of six months ago; and to both reform and extend the warm home discount to this group. In the absence of these moves, worse is indeed yet to come.
Andrew Forsey
National director, Feeding Britain
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