City foodbank use plummets due to grants - charity

A West Yorkshire foodbank says it has seen a drop by almost a third in the number of people using its services this month.

About 1,000 people asked for help from the Bradford Central Foodbank so far in February - down by almost 500 from the previous month.

But its manager Josie Barlow, from the Trussell Trust, says this is only due to increased help from the Cost of Living Grants scheme which is about to stop.

She has joined calls from a number of charities, including the trust, for the government to increase Universal Credit payments.

"The Cost of Living Grants are, and were, obviously a good idea to help people over the cost of living crisis.

"But I think it really shows that when you give enough money to people to actually live on then they don't need a foodbank.

"People are on such tight budgets. For a single person, Universal Credit is currently £85 a week.

"But the Joseph Roundtree Foundation worked out that they need £120 to actually live on."

In January the Bradford Central Foodbank fed 1,573 people compared to February's figure of about 1,000, although Ms Barlow expects that to go up once the grants stop.

Last year it helped a total of 16,184 residents living in the Bradford district.

A government spokesperson said: “We are providing £104bn in cost of living support worth on average £3,700 per household, including investing over £2bn into the Household Support Fund to help those in most need – and almost £800m has been paid out to families with children so far."

They added that, since 2010, 1.7 million fewer people were living in absolute poverty and that work was the best route out of poverty.

To help this the National Living Wage was being lifted and a Back to Work Plan introduced.