HARLOW is a great ‘family town’. Residents value a safe and secure home for kids and parents. Long may that continue!

So now it’s a tough time. We are going to feel the pinch of the growing cost-of-living rise terribly. 

At the Foodbank we awaited the Chancellor’s Spring Statement eagerly, thinking that it would bring some consolation to those most dependent on Universal Credit. 

We had asked Robert Halfon to raise our concerns about the situation, as it affects nearly all of our users. Inflation looks set to make the cost of living 10% more expensive for those on benefits, yet the rate of payment was only set to rise by 3.1% in April. 

I am confident that he did raise that issue, and I’m still trying to recover from the shock that there was no significant response. 

Sure, there is more money in a pot that regional Councils can split up for people in hardship, should they find the right door to knock on and ask… But that would amount to about £6 a week each if it were evenly distributed between the 3.2 million predicted to enter dire poverty. That £6 is £14 less than the £20 they got during the pandemic. 

Because of this inaction, the Resolution Foundation now forecasts that a further 1.3 million people will now go into poverty in the UK. 

1.3 million more people in the UK equates to roughly 1,500 more people (adults and children) in Harlow. 

Over the last year we gave out nearly 3,000 food parcels (thanks to you!). We think this will now be more like 4,000 in the year to come, supporting 2,400 adults and 1,600 children to get food on their table for (on average) 2-3 weeks each. 

We are now concerned that it will be difficult to keep pace with that need. Particularly when times are hard for everyone, so that adding a little help in the Foodbank basket will be more difficult when you shop.

Because we are often out and about talking to people, like on supermarket appeal days, we know that people have mixed feelings about the Foodbank. Please rest assured that we do too. The Foodbank was not started 13 years ago to make us feel good. It exists to stop hunger: protecting people from unforeseen hardship or crisis. 

That is not just about money. At that point in the poverty cycle it equates to kids failing in their education, parents with fragile mental health, workers carrying a sense of failure, isolated in their homes, physically more vulnerable, estranged from their families, on the outside of society for fear of shame. That’s what we are trying to stop. 

As a charity where we must keep responding to that rise in poverty, though we don’t know how we can match it. We believe we can, with the added help of our wonderful Harlow neighbours, but we are now giving out more than we get in, and stocks are low. 

But we also believe that those neighbours wouldn’t have minded a rise in the level of Universal Credit that saved another 1,500 men, women and children in this position. 

In fact, we fear that we are now plugging a gap that people are taking for granted: it’s like polic makers think, “we don’t have to increase the levels of benefits because there is always the Foodbank”. 

That thought is shocking to us. 

Sure, we hope that there will always be some kind of foodbank. One that operates out of a few cupboards, like 13 years ago. But not 4,000 food parcels a year!?

So in the face of the disappointment of this last week, we ask our supporters to please ‘Keep Giving, Harlow’ (a campaign we will launch in the coming weeks). 

But give in two ways. 

Pass on food to your neighbours if you can, but also add your voice to our MP. 

Ask him that the neighbours you help can also get their benefits increased in line with inflation. They are the ones most dependent on the government and have no other paymasters, and no spare cash whatsoever. If someone has got to the point when they need benefit support, they also need the dignity and resilience to get out of their crisis quickly rather than using up all their time and energy coping with fallout. That is the current, crushing, state of play. And it looks set happen to another 1,500 in our town.

It may not be too late to make that point. Miracles, like U-turns, do happen!

Thanks for listening and for all your amazing help. 

Andy Thornton

CEO – MRCT / Harlow Foodbank