Jane Calcott, trustee of Kettering Food Bank, details the increase in demand for food parcels
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00:00 This year we've seen unprecedented demand in food from new people and people who've
00:11 used us in the past. We're also finding our shelves are incredibly bare for this time
00:17 of year. This is actually a first for us that this year we have had to buy so much food
00:23 in. We've just had a delivery this week actually of just under £2,000 worth of food
00:29 and our shelves are still looking pretty bare. Sometimes both parents are working and they're
00:35 still finding it hard to manage. It's not only housing costs and food costs, it's also
00:41 fuel and car costs as well, which is necessary if you need to get to work. We're also seeing
00:48 a rise in old age pensioners, those who don't have private pensions coming to us, who just
00:54 cannot cope now. Some of it is due to past debt that they had last winter when costs
00:59 were so high and they're still paying those costs and accumulating now will be the costs
01:06 this winter, which we are not looking forward to because if people are saying, for instance,
01:11 putting £20 on their gas meters and having £7 or £8 taken out due to debt, then they've
01:17 got to top their gas meter up more than they would normally do, which is then eating into
01:23 food money, which is what is causing a lot of people problems at this moment in time.
01:27 And bear in mind, this is the end of September, it's warm, it's not cold and we have the winter
01:32 coming. Along with other food banks, we are really, really worried about what the future
01:37 is going to hold this winter. People are definitely going hungry. We have parents in particular
01:44 who go hungry because they want to make sure that their children are fed. They often say
01:49 that they haven't actually eaten apart from an odd slice of toast for three or four days.
01:54 We've already had a couple of schools contact us and a couple of churches regarding harvest
02:00 festival collections, which is, this time of year is always tremendous for us. We do
02:05 get harvest collections and when we get Christmas getting a little bit nearer, people are always
02:10 exceedingly generous because it is Christmas. The problem is that last year, the Christmas
02:17 and the harvest food and the other donations managed to last us right through until June
02:21 or July. This year, we've been buying food in since March and that's because of a lack
02:28 of donations and also an increase in clientele. We have had in the, for the month of August,
02:34 a 65% increase this year on the same time last year, which is quite frightening.