A mother from Kent gives a heartbreaking description of the difficulty of making ends meet for her family, “I have sat down and cried many times, feeling like I have let my children down.”
Still with four children under the age of 13, the family lives in a rented flat in the town of Herne Bay on the county’s north coast. She does not come to the door, but her partner delivers a handwritten note reflecting on their meager existence on benefits as the Guardian joins the local food bank’s morning delivery rounds.
“I have to be careful about electricity and gas and the diet has to be £1 frozen meals,” she writes. “Snacks are a very rare thing. If it wasn’t for the Canterbury Food Bank we would have nothing but pasta.
“My kids will have smaller things at Christmas and that will mean less money on food, more stress and worry.”
The charity is on the frontline of the ongoing cost of living crisis, which Rachel Reeves has promised to tackle with measures to slow price rises in her Budget next week.
In 2019, the food bank, based at an industrial unit in nearby Whitstable, was giving out 450 parcels per month. Now, a typical month involves more than 1,100 parcels, sometimes as many as 1,400. The volume of food going out puts the charity, covering Canterbury, Whitstable and Herne Bay, in the top 5% of food banks in the country.
When these types of services were first set up in the UK after the 2008–09 financial crisis, most people thought they would outlive their value within two or three years. But this is the Guardian’s third visit to the food bank in four years, but it shows no sign of reaching its use-by date.
In February 2022, the charity had gone from spending almost nothing on food (as donations were matching demand) to almost £3,000 a month as the Covid crisis escalated the cost of living. When we returned the following year, its monthly food bill was £7,000. Today it is £10,000.
It receives generous support locally, with food donations increasing and coming in at between 1,100 and 1,400 kilograms per month. But with demand increasing 15% year on year, the charity is using cash donations and grant money to cover its bills. Meanwhile, rising food prices make every sense The pound buys less than before.
Data from the Office for National Statistics this week showed that UK inflation eased back to 3.6% in October. However, a deeper look reveals pressure on households, as rising prices of bread, cereals, meat and vegetables pushed the annual food and drink inflation rate to 4.9%, up from 4.5% last month.
“Every pound we spend buys about 10% less food than it did a year and a half ago,” says Stuart Jenike, the charity’s head of finance.
The cost of its shopping basket has increased by about 11% in that time, he says, pointing to sharp growth on items such as teabags, hot chocolate and coffee.
Speculation has been rife about Reeves’ tax-hike plans, but the food bank’s small team of staff and 200 volunteers remain hopeful the two-child benefit limit will be scrapped.
The end of the policy – which means parents can only claim Universal Credit or tax credits for their first two children – will mean “my children will be able to get more of the things they need”, the Herne Bay mother added.
Her partner’s mental illnesses prevent him from working and she is also unable to work because the special educational needs of two children means “constant calls to go to school”.
Alison Garnham, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, says getting rid of the limit is “the right thing to do”. She says a reversal would immediately lift 350,000 children out of poverty and reduce the hardship experienced by another 700,000, adding: “Removing this deadly policy will mean millions more children get the fair start in life they deserve.”
It is the “financial side” that the food bank is feeling the most pressure as its regular donors are also feeling greater hardship.
“Even when headline inflation falls, supermarket prices don’t go back down – they remain high,” says Jenike. “We’re getting paid the same as everyone else.
He added, “Monetary donations from the public have declined sharply – down by more than £80,000 over the past two years if current trends continue – and grants have become much more competitive and much less predictable.”
The charity has received around 60% of its expected income this year, but is fortunate to be able to draw on its financial reserves for another year.
“So we’re in a situation where demand has increased, food prices have increased, donations have decreased, and funding is unstable,” he says. “And behind those numbers are the real households: more working families, more single parents, more older people, and more people seeking uncooked food because they can’t afford energy.
“This is no longer an emergency surge. This has become the new normal.”
According to Peter Taylor-Gooby, Canterbury has an average position, finishing in mid-table in the list of 296 local authority districts according to the 2025 Indices of Deprivation., Research Professor of Social Policy at the University of Kent, who is one of the charity’s trustees.
He says the problems that local people face in seaside towns are not unusual. “It’s got a lot of tourism, a little bit of retail and the kind of jobs you get are insecure and low-paid.”
Nearby Canterbury, with three universities, also has a large, cheap labor pool that drives down wages, although increasingly students are also turning to the food bank for help.
“In the Canterbury region, poverty is becoming deeper and more concentrated, as it is across the country,” says Taylor-Gobbie, who says this is because benefits and wages have not kept pace with the rising cost of living.
With no light at the end of the tunnel, Reform UK’s populism has resonated with voters. It took control of Kent County Council in May, although recordings of an internal meeting recently published by the Guardian revealed bitter divisions as it strained against the financial realities of the job.
“There is a by-election for the local council in my ward and talking to people you get the feeling that ‘no one has ever done anything for us,’” says Taylor-Gooby.
On the second floor of the small business unit there is a bank of desks where staff calmly deal with requests for help from sometimes extremely nervous people. callers
The most common issue is the cost of living, says Maria. “The prices of food, fuel and rent are rising, but wages and benefits are not. Many people have unpredictable hours or zero-hours contracts, so a quiet week at work could mean an empty fridge.”
Her colleague Julia says that “any buffer or rainy-day fund is long gone”, so unexpected expenses like children’s clothes or parking fines can put people in dire straits.
At a time when many Britons are considering buying Advent calendars filled with everything from marshmallows to gin miniatures, a poster on the wall is advertising a “reverse Advent calendar”. The campaign suggests adding one item a day to a bag for life – from baked beans to mince pies and shampoo – and then donating it.
Operations manager Liam Waghorn explains that charities have to “work harder” because there is more competition. “We have to go and find donations instead of expecting them.” Technology helps. One new help is the BanktheFood app, which sends supporters alerts about products in short supply.
On each Guardian visit, the food bank – originally a community project run by local churches – grows more attractive and commercial. Thanks to the IT wizardry of one of the retired volunteers, screens at the picking stations have replaced pen and paper, giving real-time information as parcel requests are logged.
Waghorn proudly states that he is able to add fresh food, such as bread and eggs, to his parcels to make them more nutritious. It has extended the service to next day delivery.
Taylor-Gooby says that as poverty has become more widespread, food banks have necessarily become larger and more professional. “The goal of food banks was once to create jobs themselves. Now they have become an essential part of the welfare state.”
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