David Holt, chairman of trustees at the food bank, said: “We provided enough food to make 135,000 meals last year and that was an 18% increase year on year.
“It goes up every year and every year we hope it’ll go down, and every year it fails to do so.”
The latest figures from the Department for Work and Pensions estimate that 4.45 million children live in households of relative low income, that’s 12% of children in the South East region.
The Trussell Trust found in its nationwide survey in 2024 that one in 12 working adults said they had used some kind of charitable food provision.
The government has previously said “around 550,000 children will be lifted out of poverty by 2030 – the biggest reduction in a single parliament since records began” with its new child poverty strategy.
