Between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021, food banks in the Trussell Trust’s UK wide network distributed 2.5 million emergency food parcels to people in crisis, a 33% increase on the previous year. 980,000 of these went to children.

Hunger in the UK isn’t about food. It’s about a lack of income. We know the main drivers of food bank use in our network are:  

• Problems with the benefits system (delays, inadequacy and reductions) 
• Challenging life experiences or ill-health 
• Lack of informal or formal support 

Our statistics are a measure of volume rather than unique users, the available data indicates that people received around 2.4 food bank referrals in the last year. The data is collected using an online system into which food banks enter data from each food bank voucher, and the number of emergency food supplies is recorded. 

For example, if a family of three were referred to a food bank twice in one year, this would count as six supplies on the system because it would reflect six instances of a supply going to someone in the household. However, if a family of three were only referred to a food bank once, this would count as three supplies. 

Trussell Trust figures cannot be used to fully explain the scale of food bank use across the UK, because our figures relate to food banks in our network and not to the hundreds of independent food aid providers and community-groups also providing support. There are more than 1,300 food bank centres in the Trussell Trust’s UK wide network. The Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN) represents more than 500 independent food banks operating across the UK. IFAN has identified at least 1,034 independent food banks across the UK in addition to food banks in the Trussell Trust network, Salvation Army, and school-based food banks.   

Read our full data briefing here. You can access breakdowns of the data to local authority level here.