Online searches for nearest food banks have sky-rocketed as the cost of living crisis pushes once ‘secure’ people into food insecurity.

There are a lot of things on Brits’ minds at the moment. Eye-watering high inflation, recession, rising bills and a plummeting pound, to name a few.

And such concerns are weighing heavy on people’s heads, according to an analysis of Google searches since March 2020 by the Labour Party.

People searching for ‘food banks near me’ increased by 250%.

Searches in ‘energy bill help’ have soared to their highest rate in the last five years, while ‘apply for universal credit’ shot up by 50%.

The number of searches for ‘universal credit advance payment’ has more than doubled.

Fuel Poverty Action said people looking to emergency food systems is a sign things are getting worse – and fast.

‘Not long ago everyone was talking about the choice between heating and eating,’ the campaign group told Metro.co.uk.

‘Now many people cannot afford either – and being both cold and hungry is a recipe for disaster.’ 

Michael Clarke, head of information programmes at anti-poverty group Turn2us, said the government must step up as people’s desperation grows.

‘It is clear that not enough is being done to prevent people from slipping into poverty,’ he said.

‘We are already seeing almost half of our service users reporting being left with nothing to live on each week after paying housing, council tax and utility bills.

‘With the weight of this crisis pushing more people into the red, more must be done in the long-term to reform our economy and to stop the growing inequalities in our society.’

Inflation is one of the big reasons for the rise in food insecurity.

Higher prices for housing, gas, electricity and food especially mean, for an increasing number of Brits, food banks are the only way for them to eat.

Prices of some food products have risen by as much as 80%, pushing the UK’s inflation rate to a 40-year high.

And the impact of this is clear. Nearly two in 10 Brits now use food banks as they feel supermarkets are too expensive, according to research by grocery retail app Ubamarket.

Even discount supermarkets aren’t cutting it anymore, researchers found, given that 52% of Brits feel their prices aren’t low enough to offset inflation.

So the number of Brits going hungry will only keep growing, said Ubamarket CEO Will Broome.

‘Our data indicates nearly 6.7 million Brits will be relying on these charities to make ends meet amidst the cost-of-living crisis,’ he said.

Food bank donations are dwindling once again as the need is rising beyond low-income people, Mr Broome added.

He said: ‘The cost-of-living crisis has on a wider scale made the nation more aware of the struggles others have been experiencing for years now, which is now affecting those on middle incomes.’

Kane Daniel Ricca, group marketing director at LAB Group, a digital agency that created the food bank-finder app, Foodbank Connector, isn’t surprised by this all.

‘When the current party took office in 2010, Statista reported that there were 61 thousand food bank users in the UK,’ Mr Ricca said.

‘Twelve years later that number is now reported at 2.1 million – if that doesn’t provide for a realistic view on the current state of affairs, I don’t know what does.’

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