Families are being locked out of support as UK food prices rise

Our members started in a rehearsal room with Proper Job Theatre Company. They ended up in Westminster.

This is the journey of preparation, passion, and powerful storytelling as our members shared their experiences of the cost of healthy food directly with MPs, policymakers and suppliers.

As national attention focuses on the food inflation and welfare changes across the UK, we’ve issued a warning that vital government support is failing to reach the families it was designed to help. The complexity, poor promotion, and disconnection between services are locking people out of schemes that could make a real difference.

Speaking at our Westminster reception in July to launch our latest Slice of Life report, CEO Vic Harper said: “The Bread and Butter Thing was set up to make life more affordable for people living on low incomes. But too often, support is hidden behind bureaucracy, jargon, or just a lack of visibility. The message we took to Parliament was clear: make life affordable - hidden help is no help. Families are slipping through the cracks not because help isn’t there, but because it’s too hard to find, too difficult to claim, and too disconnected from people’s real lives.”

The Westminster event brought together MPs, peers, charities and business leaders, including Morrisons CEO Rami Baitiéh, Baroness Walmsley, and Paul Davies MP, alongside families with lived experience of food insecurity. Together, we explored the barriers stopping families from accessing the help they’re entitled to and the urgent reforms needed to break those down. 

The Slice of Life report, based on a national survey of nearly 10,000 of the charity’s members, offers a sobering snapshot of life on a low income in the UK today. After paying for rent and energy bills, almost seven in ten households are left with less than £50 per person each month, which works out at less than £2 a day to cover food, clothing, toiletries, transport and other essentials.

Many of these families are also burdened with unsustainable debt: over 60% of those surveyed said they currently owe money, and nearly half reported having to rely on friends or family just to get by. Yet at the same time, government schemes that are designed to ease these pressures remain out of reach for far too many. 

For example, Healthy Start, which provides food vouchers and vitamins to young families, is only reaching around one in three of the people who are eligible for it. Tax-Free Childcare aimed at reducing the cost of registered childcare for working parents is used by less than half of those who qualify. Even the NHS Low Income Scheme, intended to help with healthcare costs, still relies primarily on lengthy paper forms and postal applications, with processing times that can stretch up to six weeks.

According to our research, 45% of working households don’t even know what support they’re entitled to, and almost a quarter say they don’t know whether they’re receiving their full entitlements or not. For these families, the problem isn’t just affordability, it's navigability.

“We’re not asking for more schemes,” said Vic Harper. “We’re asking for the schemes that already exist to be made accessible, understandable and consistent. That means clear communication, simpler processes, and, crucially, joining things up. Patchwork support simply doesn’t work. If we’re serious about lifting families out of crisis, we need to embed help where people already go, where trust is already built and support can be delivered holistically.”

Speaking at the event, CEO of Morrisons, Rami Baitiéh, added: “Over the last 10 years, we’ve (Morrisons) donated more than 10,000 tonnes. To date, this has helped more than 100,000 families… So, it's more about common sense, about doing the right thing… hundreds of thousands of people now have meals where they wouldn't have, and it doesn't cost more to us. And when I talk to my team who, work with you guys (TBBT), this is what makes them proud at the end of the day.”

Alongside our advocacy work, we operate a growing network of 145 community food hubs across the UK. These hubs provide affordable, healthy food to families made possible by surplus donations from supermarkets, manufacturers and growers while also serving as access points for a wider range of help, from debt advice and housing support to digital skills and wellbeing services. Nearly all participants (99%) say these hubs are beneficial to the community, and 97% report feeling welcomed, critically over half of our members say they use food banks less, or have stopped needing them altogether, since joining a Bread and Butter Thing food club.

“Families want to stand on their own feet,” Vic continued. “They want food they can rely on, support they can understand, and services that work together, not against each other. We owe it to them to get this right not through yet another app or pilot, but by fixing the basics.”