Food banks supported 800,000 UK children in 2021-22, data shows
Families including 800,000 children were forced to turn to food banks to feed themselves as poverty levels started to rise again after the first year of the pandemic, the first official figures on UK food bank use show.
The statistics came in official poverty data, which revealed that the reduction in relative poverty achieved during the first year of the Covid crisis in 2020-21 was temporary and was reversed after ministers scrapped support measures.
Experts said poverty levels and food bank use would have risen rapidly since the latest data was collected in 2021-22 because of the removal of the £20-a-week uplift to universal credit in October 2021, and the emergence of a devastating cost of living crisis driven by soaring fuel and food costs.
A fifth of the UK population (14.4 million people) was in relative poverty in 2021-22, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) data shows, including 4.2 million children (29%), 8.1 million working-age adults and 2.1 million pensioners.
About 3% of the UK population had accessed a food bank at least once in the previous 12 months during 2021-22, though this rose to 16% of households claiming universal credit, further fuelling concerns that benefit payments are too low to cover everyday living costs.
By the same token, 6% of people nationally experienced high or very high food insecurity, meaning they struggled to afford sufficient food for them and their family. One-third (33%) of food-insecure households reported that they had used food banks in the previous 12 months.
Heather Buckingham of the Trussell Trust food bank network said the data showed thousands of people were already unable to afford the essentials even before the cost of living crisis began to bite. Since then, the
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