Hardship does not start at the food bank

Food banks are where the income crisis becomes visible. By the time someone needs emergency food, it is rarely the only essential they have gone without.

Housing advisers, youth services, and local crisis support meet people earlier, at the points where hardship is building: the move out of school with no family safety net, the rent that leaves nothing for food or bills, or the sudden drop in income. 

Organisations working on different parts of people’s lives reached the same conclusion: people are pulled into hardship by incomes that do not cover the essentials, housing they cannot afford, and support that is too hard to reach.  

That evidence was brought to Parliament this week, at a reception hosted by the APPG on Ending the Need for Food Banks to mark the publication of Hardship in the UK.

The report is a synthesis of the Living Costs in Context Series, developed with partners including Feeding Britain, The Food Foundation, the Independent Food Aid Network, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Sustain, and Trussell.

Together, these partners brought perspectives from charitable food provision; food policy; public health; research; and anti-poverty work to better understand how wider systems shape people’s ability to afford the essentials, and what this means for the need for charitable food provision.

The series focused on three areas where these pressures are becoming visible:  young people, housing, and crisis support:

• For young people, hardship can intensify at key transition points such as leaving school, trying to access work, housing or support, or navigating systems that assume family support when it’s not there.
• On housing, frontline organisations described how high rents, insecure tenancies, poor-quality accommodation, and gaps in support with housing costs can leave people with too little left for food, bills, and other essentials.
• On crisis support, the evidence showed the importance of help that is easy to access and available before hardship escalates. Cash-first crisis support, linked to advice and wider local services, can help people stabilise their situation and avoid being pulled further into crisis.

These are not separate issues – they overlap in people’s lives. A young person moving into their first home may also be dealing with low-paid work and unstable housing. A family facing unaffordable rent may be pushed into debt and crisis before the right advice reaches them.  

The evidence also showed that this picture can change. Hardship is not inevitable. Prevention works: enough income through work and social security to afford the essentials; housing that people can afford and live in safely; cash-first crisis support connected to advice; and services that work together around people, instead of expecting people in crisis to navigate complex systems alone.

The APPG on Ending the Need for Food Banks has a vital role in creating space for parliamentarians from across parties to hear this evidence directly. Lived experience shows the human reality of policy choices. Frontline evidence shows where systems are breaking down in practice. Research helps identify the patterns and scale of the challenge. And Parliament has the power to turn that understanding into action.

The strength of Living Costs in Context lies in this shared approach. Each organisation brought different evidence, expertise and relationships, but the pattern they identified was consistent: people are being pushed into hardship by low incomes, high costs, insecure housing, and support systems that are too often difficult to access or too slow to respond.

This event comes at an important time. It is the second week of Parliament's return, under a new Prime Minister who has made raising living standards his defining mission. The UK government has committed to ending the need for emergency food. It was welcome to hear Baroness Sherlock, Minister at the Department for Work and Pensions – reiterate the importance of that manifesto commitment in her speech. To make that commitment real, action must reach beyond food banks. It must address the drivers of hardship before people are pushed into crisis.  

We will continue to work together, with the Living Costs in Context partners, the APPG on Ending the Need for Food Banks, policymakers, the frontline organisations and people with lived experience to help turn the tide on the need for food banks. We are grateful to all who contributed to the evidence series and the reception.

Read the Living Costs in Context reports here.