Food banks in the Trussell Trust network distributed close to 3 million (2,986,203) emergency food parcels between 1 April 2022 to 31st March 2023. This is the most parcels that the network has ever distributed in a financial year and represents a 37% increase from the same period in 2021/22.
This is also the first time that food banks in the Trussell Trust network have provided over a million parcels for children, with record levels of need seen for both children and adults this year.
During the last financial year, Chepstow Foodbank fed 1587 people, with 509 of those being children under the age of sixteen. Financial Year 2022 – 2023 was our busiest year since opening in 2012.
The need seen in this 12-month period is even greater than that seen by the network in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the financial year 2020/21, food banks in the Trussell Trust network saw record levels of need as the impact of redundancies, reduction to incomes, and the income shocks of moving from employment to social security that many households experienced took hold. The increases seen in 2022/23 represent a 16% increase on this turbulent year.
