The shelves should be chock-a-block with baked beans, soup and tuna but it looks as if someone has played Supermarket Sweep and Angela Gardiner admits she has never seen supplies at the food bank so depleted.
“I have never seen it like this,” Gardiner says, pointing to yawning gaps on the blue racks filling the unit at the Canterbury food bank, where she is operations director. “This is normally full of beans, but we are short of tinned stuff.”
After the Christmas rush, January is usually a quiet month for the charity, with demand dropping by about 40%. However, this year has been different. It delivered a record 1,460 parcels in December and the tally for January is not far off that, at 1,300. After that bumper December, donations are down sharply as its supporters rein in spending after Christmas.
When the Guardian first visited a year ago, the charity had gone from spending virtually nothing on food to spending about £3,000 a month to cover the shortfall in donations as the Covid crisis segued into a cost of living crisis, forcing it to rapidly expand its service. At the time that figure seemed shocking, but in January the charity’s food bill totalled nearly £7,000.
Not only is demand greater, each pound is not going as far, as the price of everyday foods – from baked beans, biscuits, pasta, instant coffee and long-life milk – rises.
In February 2022, the cost of the items in a standard parcel (enough to feed one person for three days) came to £24.78. Today an equivalent food parcel costs £34.11, an increase of £9.33 or nearly 38%. A children’s food parcel is up by £8.24 to £25.75, a jump of 47%.
A year ago inflation was “just” 5.5%, but the Ukraine war has changed all that. Official figures to be published on Wednesday are expected to show the annual rate dipped to 10.3% in January.
While the headline rate has begun to fall back from its peak, the crisis is not over in the grocery aisles, with food price inflation hitting a record 16.7% in the four weeks to 22 January, according to Kantar.
Demand has risen in grim lockstep with a deepening cost of living crisis. In 2021, the food bank gave out 7,376 parcels but last year that figure was 11,539 – an increase of more than 50% and enough food to make more than 100,000 meals. The 1,266 parcels it gave out in January is nearly double that of the same month a year ago.
Peter Taylor-Gooby, professor of social policy at the University of Kent, and one of the charity’s trustees, says rising poverty in the area is due to low wages in the retail, hospitality and social care sectors that are big local employers.
For the low-paid, there has been government help with energy bills but “no corresponding help with food”, Taylor-Gooby says. Prices for staple foods such as bread and cereal as well as supermarket value ranges have risen the most, meaning poorer families are experiencing a higher rate of food price inflation.
Distributing food at this scale means the donations gathered in 100 bins dotted in local supermarkets just do not cut it any more. In her small upstairs office, Sue Roberts, finance manager, says the charity initially struggled to get the local cash and carry store to take it on as a client (it feared orders would be too small). The food bank now has a regular delivery slot.
“There is such a weight of goods to move, our volunteers can’t do it in the van,” says Roberts. “It can be over a tonne of stuff by the time you have put in 280 cans of this and 300 cans of that.”
Food banks are supposed to be a short-term fix. The charity’s code (although not strictly adhered to) is to deliver a run of five parcels, giving an individual time to sort themselves out when they have suffered a financial shock, such as redundancy, and are waiting for their benefit application to be processed.
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Single mum Emma Gatfield, who lives in nearby Herne Bay, is grateful to the charity after it came to her aid during the pandemic. She has fibromyalgia and is now in a better position after starting to receive disability benefits.
But she is still terrified about the future. The monthly rent on her semi-detached bungalow will rise to an unaffordable £1,000 later this year. When she and her son moved in five years ago, it was £795.
“Energy bills have crippled me,” she says. “I’m down to basics. I’ve got rid of Sky, the wifi is probably going to have to go at some point. I am only doing washing once a week.”
While Gatfield still manages to sound positive, James and Valerie*, who live nearby, have hit rock bottom. “It feels like every day is doomsday,” says Valerie. “The fridge is empty, the freezer is empty.”
The couple, who have three children, are behind on the rent on their council house. Arrears are being deducted from their monthly universal credit payments so they have even less to money to get by on.
They have health problems and have been accessing the food bank on and off since 2020 when James was made redundant. The house feels cold, with Valerie swaddled in the fluffy hooded blanket she says she never takes off.
Back at the charity, Taylor-Gooby says finances are in good health for what promises to be a busy 2023. “Food donations are flat, but cash donations have increased and some of our supporters have been extremely generous, so we are solvent,” he says.
“Who knows the future?” he says. “When food banks were first established in the UK after the 2008-09 financial crisis, most people thought they would outlive their value in two or three years. They are now essential to make life possible for the most vulnerable people in our society.”
* Not their real names