‘Demand is at its highest ever at Cambridge City Foodbank - we even ran out of baked beans’

Opinion | By Margaret Saner, CEO, Cambridge City Foodbank

In the 12 years that Cambridge City Foodbank has been operating, we have never known a time when we’ve been short of baked beans. It’s a staple, go-to foodbank item that people love to donate and which we always have plenty of – until now. This year, maybe for the first time ever, we ran out of donated baked beans and had to buy them in.

This is a sign of the times. Foodbanks are being pulled from both directions thanks to the cost of living crisis – less people are donating because they simply cannot afford to, meanwhile demand for emergency food is rising.

In May this year, we had our second busiest month ever, with 1,205 people in Cambridgeshire receiving an emergency food parcel from us. To put this into context, at the height of the pandemic in April 2020, we helped 1,116 visitors.

During our busiest month ever, we supported over 1,250 people and families, but this was in December 2021 and we always expect it to be busy around Christmas. For it to be as busy as it is in the summer months is entirely unprecedented and very concerning. We hoped May would be a one off, but June was as bad, with more than 1,200 visitors to our centres, and we are now well on track to support over 12,000 people in 2022; our busiest year yet.

[Read more: Hope Fairbite opens in Cambridge, offering affordable food to members]

As the community is aware, Cambridge is a very complex and unequal city; in many areas, we have people who own £1million+ houses living just a stone’s throw from people who have been placed in housing by a Housing Association and are relying on benefits. Even in some of the most affluent areas of Cambridge, there is often also great poverty. The pandemic, and then the rising cost of living, have shown that anyone can find themselves in need.

To ensure we can serve people in and around the city, we have eight Foodbank centres - three located in the city centre, and the others in Arbury, Chesterton, Trumpington, Northstowe and Cambourne, as well as our two Fairbite shops in Arbury and Chesterton. Our Cambourne and Arbury centres have been particularly busy this year, with numbers doubling compared to last year, but the reality is that across Cambridge we are experiencing an increased level of need.

We’re seeing the impact of the cost of living crisis in our centres every single day. A warehouse that is usually overflowing with food items, is now piled high with empty food crates. Our centres that, on quiet weeks, would usually only serve a handful of people, are seeing more people every week.

[Read more: Food bank use in Cambridge soars to unprecedented levels for adults and children]

So, what’s the solution? Our goal is not to serve as many people as possible. While we will always be there for people in crisis, our overarching mission is to, essentially, put ourselves out of business – we want the need for foodbanks to be eradicated. As one of our volunteers put it, we don't want to give people a fish every week, we want to make sure they know how, and where, to get their own fish.

So, while juggling the current demand in our centres, we are also doing what we can to signpost our visitors to the additional support they need to live independently long-term – whether that’s mental health support, employment advice or assistance with drug and substance addiction.

On a local level, we’re doing what we can to support people in this period of financial crisis, but the reality is that Cambridge is not alone in this situation. The cost of living crisis is impacting Foodbanks all over the UK, both in terms of falling donations and rising visitor numbers, and there is a much bigger change that needs to happen on a national, governmental level for us to all turn the situation around.

In the meantime, we desperately need the support of the community to continue doing what we’re doing. Food donations are still much lower than we would like them to be and, as our centres get busier, we also need more volunteers who can give their time to help out. For more information on how to get involved, please visit: https://cambridgecity.foodbank.org.uk/give-help/