Volunteers say they have never seen such acute need as inflation, soaring energy costs and cuts to benefits force growing numbers into dire poverty

A n uncomfortable silence fills the hall of St Bride’s church in Liverpool. In a few minutes, its doors will open to some of the city’s hungriest families. Between 250 and 300 people are expected at its latest weekly food bank, although it could be more. But there is little to offer them: only 150 parcels of food and a small pile of unwanted clothes.

For the first time in years, the volunteers have to turn people away. They look aghast. “That will last half an hour at best. What do we do then?” asks Julian Sowden, one of the longest-serving volunteers. “There’s nothing else to give them. We just stop? We just shut the door?”

The answer – “yes” – is met with silence. School holidays are approaching, says another helper, the church will be “inundated with people who can’t feed their children”. Nick Mendes, one of the trustees, asks in a plaintive prayer for God to “supply our needs”. Little more than an hour later, the food has gone.

This Liverpool food bank – and thousands more like it – are at the sharpest edge of a deepening economic crisis that has its roots in the Covid pandemic and in the corridors of power from Westminster to Moscow.

As prices continued to rise at their fastest rate for more than 40 years, the Guardian spent two weeks on the frontline of Britain’s cost-of-living crisis and listened to those struggling to survive the biggest fall in living standards since the mid-1950s. It heard of families stockpiling cheap disposable barbecues to cook during winter, others hoarding candles to light their homes, and some rationing sheets of toilet paper.

Among those relying on emergency handouts were a recently retired NHS receptionist, a self-employed father of two who said he would need to steal from supermarkets to feed his children, and a recently arrived Ukrainian family surviving on food parcels, in part due to delays in the UK’s welfare system.

For Kevin McKenna, 59, life in Britain today is harder than it was almost six decades ago. “In the 60s, it was rough here,” he says, around the corner from the Toxteth tenement flat where he grew up. “There were three of us in a bed with just a blanket thrown on us. But at least I had a bath. I can’t even have a bath now because it’s the cost. I’ve priced it – it’s £2.20 on the meter.” He laughs with incredulity. “It sounds daft. I can only have a shower now – and I’m jumping in it and jumping out.”

McKenna, a talented amateur boxer in his youth, worked all his life before cancer forced him to retire in 2018. He has used the food bank at St Vincent de Paul church on and off ever since. He loves Toxteth but is desperate to move. The bedroom tax takes £14 a week out of his £84 universal credit allowance for a room he does not want. He has pleaded with Liverpool city council for a smaller property but none are available.

“Fourteen pounds a week – that’s a lot of money for me,” he says. Before the Russian invasion sent energy prices soaring, £15 would keep McKenna’s gas on for a week. Now his prepayment meter guzzles £30 in eight days. He doesn’t drink, shops around for the best deals, and forgoes small treats such as Sunday dinners because of the gas. “I don’t owe bills or anything but I can feel myself slipping into it now,” he says. “Your pride’s going out of you now because you’re trying to find what you can afford but you can’t afford it.”

A commotion breaks out in the queue for groceries. A self-employed software engineer, who relies on food banks a few times a year when times are hard, is angry that the quality of items in each handout has been reduced to meet the increased demand. A box of cereal has been replaced by a sachet of porridge, he says. How is he supposed to feed his two kids, aged 11 and 16? “I will have to shoplift. It’s a fucking joke. It never used to be like this – it’s a nightmare.”

It is a nightmare that goes far beyond Liverpool. The global economy is grappling with higher food and fuel prices in the wake of Covid, a supply chain crisis and Russia’s war in Ukraine. The UK, which has the highest inflation in the G7, has been particularly exposed to the shock due to disruption related to Brexit – such as worker shortages and paperwork delays – and as a net importer of energy.

But charities say that a combination of the long squeeze on welfare payments, the two-child benefit cap, stagnant public sector pay, the bedroom tax, and the removal of the £20 universal credit uplift last October have helped lead vastly more people to food banks.

There are other structural factors that leave the poorest most exposed to rising inflation. Millions of Britain’s most deprived families rely on top-up prepayment meters for their gas and electricity, at rates often hundreds of pounds a year more expensive than monthly tariffs. They also tend to live in so-called “food deserts” – areas without easy access to a supermarket – so generally pay more for less nutritious food often from corner shops.

Clutching a wheelie bag of donated food outside St Bride’s church, a former NHS receptionist says she never expected to be relying on handouts after retiring in January after 30 years’ service.

The 66-year-old, who did not want to be named, says her daughter is having to help her with food and laundry because the washing machine costs too much to run.

“I don’t like having to come here. It’s nice to be able to go to the shop and get what you want, isn’t it?” she says. “I’ve got no money left today. I get my pension [£185.15 a week] tomorrow but I’ve got nothing at all. If I didn’t have my children I’d be really stuck.”

It was not how she expected to spend her retirement: “I was managing but now I’m not. I don’t really do anything except survive.”

The food bank at St Bride’s church, just north of Liverpool’s huge cathedral, is one of two run by Micah Liverpool, the city’s biggest independent food aid provider. The charity gave out 19,000 food parcels to 6,000 people last year. During the pandemic, its volunteers handed out an average of 73 emergency provisions during its two-hour food bank every Tuesday. That has more than doubled since then, to about 150, and is expected to rise further.

T hree miles away in west Everton, Ann Roach, a community worker, says people are already resorting to extreme measures to prepare for winter: “People are looking for throwaway barbecues, old barbecues and wood for fires to cook on for the winter. People are already buying candles [to use as lights].”

Roach runs the area’s food bank and a community pantry where people can buy £15 to £20 worth of groceries for a weekly subscription of £3.50 – a model becoming more widespread across Britain as people seek cheaper alternatives.

People are already disconnecting appliances such as washing machines because they are too expensive to run, she says. In recent weeks she has encountered a mother of seriously ill children who was terrified about not being able to wash their bedding the next time they have an accident. Another elderly woman, who had arthritis, was washing all of her laundry by hand in the bath to cut down on electricity and water.

“You can’t even give people hope now because I’ve got no hope,” she says. “We used to have hope but we haven’t got it now. It just feels like you’re sinking in sand.”

Food banks across Britain are suffering from a form of long Covid. During the pandemic, many better-off families switched to online grocery shopping and worked from home – habits that have stuck for a lot of people. That means fewer donations from office fundraisers and fewer items left in food bank stands at supermarkets, removing two key forms of support.

Paul O’Brien, Micah’s executive director, says donations have “dropped off a cliff” since March when more people started to feel the pinch. “We used to empty the church donation box once a week – now it’s once a month.” The charity is having to dip into its fast-depleting cash reserves to fill the parcels, spending £1,200 last week on milk, fruit and vegetables. “And that hasn’t even touched the sides – it could easily be £1,500,” says Martin Fuller, the charity’s driver. “We used to have a weekly budget of £300 but used to spend £100. We never ever had to do this.”

Food banks in Liverpool face an additional pressure, says Dr Naomi Maynard of Feeding Liverpool, because the city is the dispersal centre for asylum seekers in north-west England. Lengthy delays in the application process mean many end up stuck in Liverpool for months or years. About two-thirds of the people who use Micah’s food banks are asylum seekers.

“We have had people literally shaking with nerves because of the trauma of coming in here,” says Sue Mannings, a retired teacher who registers everyone who uses the St Vincent’s food bank for the first time. Her spreadsheet is like an A-Z of the world’s conflict zones: Sudan, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Congo – and, recently, Ukraine.

Lina Kukharchuk, 36, fled her 36th-floor apartment in Kyiv with her husband and their two young sons – Mikhail, seven, and Oleksandr, three – when Russia invaded on 24 February. They arrived in Liverpool under the government’s family scheme in late March and had to wait six weeks before they were able to receive universal credit.

Kukharchuk, a childcare worker, said they had been shocked by the price of food in the UK and had been relying on a food bank and eating ready meals to save money.

“The first six weeks were the most difficult because we had to wait … for universal credit, for any money actually. Here in the UK it’s much more expensive,” she said.

Watching Oleksandr climb the church pews, Kukharchuk adds: “At first [using the food bank] was not too comfortable, to be honest. When I came first here I was a little bit in stress but I said to myself that you have a war in your country and you have to be strong, you have to forget about your emotions like comfortable or uncomfortable – you have to survive.”

B arely a mile from Liverpool’s historic waterfront are some of the most deprived streets in Britain. Nearly 60% of the city’s children live in wards that are defined as among the poorest 10% in England. Almost 22,000 children – one in four of Liverpool’s total – are classed as living in poverty and 30% are eligible for free school meals, higher than England’s average of 20%.

A survey by Feeding Liverpool of 52 food bank users last month found that low income was a key reason for their use. In a city where the average household income is £33,476, nearly £8,000 below the national average, it is little wonder that so many are seeking help. Council figures shared with the Guardian show that 66,240 working households have sought council tax support since April this year, only 251 fewer than the last financial year as a whole.

Jane Corbett, the council’s deputy mayor and its lead on fighting poverty, says the projections are “absolutely terrifying” and worse is yet to come. Officials estimate that a staggering 78% of Liverpool residents – nearly 172,000 households – will fall into fuel poverty if the energy price cap rises to £3,000 as forecast in October.

There will be real victims, says Corbett. “Yes, people will die – absolutely. The protection around people to keep them safe, as citizens of this country, is in rags. It’s in tatters.”

On the steps of St Bride’s church in Toxteth, Saima Bhatti, 37, is counting the cost of feeding her six young daughters. “When I go to the shops I feel like crying. One small packet of noodles was just 29p, now it’s 59p – the kids love them so I have no other choice,” she said, adding a pair of secondhand sandals to the pram of her bright-eyed one-year-old.

Bhatti, a single mother, said her children eat “not enough” and that everyday staples such as milk and cereal were now luxury items. “Yesterday my daughter said: ‘Mummy, what did you cook?’ and I said it was lentils and she said: ‘Mummy, why you not cook meat and stuff?’ and I say it’s very expensive.”

She adds: “It’s very hard … I’m trying to do everything that I can.”