Concerns Sheffield on a 'cliff edge' over food poverty

The committee set up a cross-party working group to consider the extent, impact and experience of food poverty in Sheffield, the current support in place and review the council’s response.

As part of the first phase of its work it considered data collected by Voluntary Action Sheffield from 19 food banks between April 13 and June 8 last year. It showed the number of households using the banks increased by more than 92 percent, from 1,144 to 2,202, during that time.

The working group said even this only showed supply and not level of need, which could be much higher.

It added that around 24,000 children, and rising, were currently eligible for free school meals and were therefore at risk of going hungry during holidays.

Councillors also said urgency around the issue was building, with Covid disproportionately affecting the poorest communities and the worst yet to come.

The group added: “We are approaching the ‘cliff-edge’ as some of the temporary Covid protections and support, such as furlough, Universal Credit uplift, stay on evictions etc. are removed.”

Recommendations, sent to ruling councillors, included implementing a Tackling Poverty Framework, challenging stigma, ensuring people are aware of and can access support, accelerating the mapping of food support, ensuring people can access other support at food banks and working with partners across the sector.

In a meeting, councillor Douglas Johnson, member of the working group, said: “Those recommendations have the potential to cover quite a lot of good work.

“It will be interesting to see what comes back if we have a look at the progress on this in possibly six months or so.”

Coun Cate McDonald, co-chair of the working group, said: “It was a really interesting piece of work and it was quite intense, we all found it interesting and learned a lot from it.

“All the way along we were trying to balance focussing on food poverty and recognising that it is just a small part of the wider poverty issues.”