Sheffield food bank boss: "People aren't paid enough and benefit payments are too low"
The chairman of one of Sheffield’s largest food banks is calling for more to be done to ease food poverty.
John Hull, chair of S2 Poverty Network, which operates a community food shop and food bank, said food poverty continues to be a pressing issue despite the work of food banks for years.
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S2 Poverty Network, founded in 2013, initially operated a food bank before launching a community food shop in 2023 to offer affordable supplies to local people in another attempt to relieve food poverty, but the chair of the organisation is calling for more action.
Mr Hull, aged 77, said the launch of the shop is part of a strategy to ‘address the underlying causes of food poverty’, however ‘these causes are not going away’.
He said: “Sadly we are aware that many people do not understand the pressures on our fellow citizens living within the same city boundaries.
“We know how hard it can be to manage with no cushion in the bank, how a crisis can suddenly emerge and overwhelm.”
The food bank is located at St. Swithun’s Church on Carey Road in which emergency food parcels are provided for those in the S1, S2 and S12 post code areas of Sheffield.
Opening the community food shop, opposite the church, was an attempt to offer longer term support.
Mr Hull said: “The condition now of membership of the food shop is that you bring us information about your debts, financial information.
“But when the four weeks are over at the food bank, if they’ve been honest with us and say how much money they’ve got, they can come to the food shop.
“People come for a half hour slot, you’re treated very well, and when you walk out having paid £5, depending on family size, you take away food to the value of about £40.”
In 2024, the food bank fed 2,548 people and the food shop fed 7,080, however recently, there has been a reduction in food donations.
Mr Hill said the causes include rising costs, covid recovery and insufficiency of benefits.
In addition to providing food and debt advice, the S2 Poverty Network also helps people accerss benefits, such as personal independence payments.
They also help clients with things such as applying for ‘debt relief orders’ - a government sponsored plan to manage debt by writing off those that are ‘simply unpayable’.
Mr Hull said: “We are immensely grateful to long-standing donors, charities and enterprises which have supported us.”
However, he said food poverty is a ‘nationwide’ issue and believes it is not spoken about enough in politics.
He said: “I think that the root cause is people aren’t paid enough, benefits aren’t sufficient, and this is political.
“I think it’s not spoken about in Parliament at all. We shouldn’t get familiar and accept the fact of food banks, we should be questioning why we’ve got them.”