Food Bank Britain A Clearer Picture, by Dr oin Clarke

Food Bank Britain, a clearer picture By Eoin Clarke

Through my research I have uncovered more than 960 Emergency Food providers (Food Banks/Soup Kitchens) operating in the UK. You can view the list of Food Banks at this link (here) and if that you have problems viewing that link please try this one instead (here). It is quite likely that there are more Food Banks that I was not able to identify through my research and as I discover more I will add them to the database. The Number of known Food Banks (January 2014)
140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 136 121 107 98 93 89 87 60 52 50

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The area of the UK with the most Food Banks is the South East of England which has 136, including 26 in Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire. The areas with the lowest number of Food Banks were Wales & Northern Ireland as well as the North East and Yorkshire/Humber.

Food Bank Britain A Clearer Picture, by Dr oin Clarke

If one added the South East/West, London and the East of England together, they would see that 390 Food Banks come from the South of England. By adding Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland together, we can say that 187 of the 960 Food Banks are from the Celtic regions of the UK. Perhaps most surprisingly, Yorkshire, Humber and the North East of England account for just over 100 of the UKs near 1,000 Food Banks. This might lead one to tentatively conclude that UK poverty is widespread, and not just confined to the parts of the UK we would normally associate with higher levels of poverty.

Share of the Food Bank Sector, By Provider

2% 2% Trussell Trust Independent

3%

2%

15%

43%

Smaller Church Networks Besom Others Basics

31%

Fare Share Food Cycle

Trussell Trust provides 395 Food Banks, and it seeds a further 15 making it the number 1 provider of Food Banks in the UK. Small independent providers make up about a third of UK Food Banks providing about 300 Food Banks. Church Groups and other smaller organisations such as Fare Share & Food Cycle make up the remaining quarter of Emergency Food Providers.

The results above will surprise most. We are led to believe by UK media that Trussell Trust provides the vast majority of UK Food Banks. Indeed when reporting data on the number of people using Food Banks, non-Trussell Trust providers are omitted altogether. This can be problematic for the survival of smaller Food Banks because Councils and Police Crime
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Food Bank Britain A Clearer Picture, by Dr oin Clarke

Commissioners have been awarding grants to the larger Food Bank Providers and overlooking smaller Food Bank networks. In future, a pooled fund that awards cash to Food Bank providers based on their respective share of provision might be a fairer way to allocate resources.

The graph above shows the number of people using Trussell Trust Food Banks, only. Of the hundreds of reports and speeches I have read on Food Bank Statistics, I have yet to see a single reference to the numbers using non-Trussell Trust providers. I say this because it is highly likely that we are under-stating the figures given that a distinct majority of Food Banks are non-Trussell Trust.

500,000 people used Trussell Trust Food Banks in the 9 months to December 2013 (here). The head of Trussell Trust says that the number of people using their Food Banks in 2014 could top 1 million. Given that we now know of the existence of 550 non-Trussell Trust food banks we should re-examine our understanding of how many are reliant on Foo Banks in the UK. If, and it is a very big if, the food bank usage statistics were extrapolated across all 960 Food Banks for the 9 months from April-December 2013, we might speculate that 1.17 million used Food Banks in those 9 months. One would hope that this is an over-statement, as
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Food Bank Britain A Clearer Picture, by Dr oin Clarke

it is possible persons approach multiple food banks for aid when they lose entitlement at one Food Bank, as is often the case when three vouchers expire.

Conclusions

1. Food Bank data previously under-stated the number of UK Food Banks by as much as 550. 2. Trussell Trust, whilst the largest provider, actually has just a 43% share of Food Bank provision in the UK. 3. Wealthier parts of the UK, in particular the South East, rely on Food Banks much more than we were previously aware. 4. Food bank usage statistics are dramatically understated. It is highly likely that upwards of 1 million UK citizens are drawing upon Food Bank assistance.