Inflation - and the fight against Gloucestershire’s growing hunger crisis
Food prices remained a focus when inflation figures emerged this week, and with good reason. We spoke to two charities helping thousands unable to afford to eat. Many of them children.
Dear reader,
Whether you see the story below about thousands of people annually in Gloucestershire unable to afford to eat as wholly depressing, or choose to see the positive in the passion and commitment of the charities and their army of volunteers, it’s is up to you.
When the monthly inflation figures emerge courtesy of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) many of us zone out, others might check their investments, consider mortgage and loan repayments and impacts on real earnings.
We all have our own challenges.
For a growing army numbering in their thousands annually in Gloucestershire - news that the cost of living continues to rise means one thing; buying regular food for themselves and their families remains out of reach.
We can all help, of course. And many do.
If you read to the bottom of the main article you’ll see we begin to plug the charity CCP’s quite incredible annual Hamper Scamper Christmas campaign. Now there’s a great opportunity to get involved.
Have a great weekend.
Best regards,
Andrew Merrell (editor).
Your briefing notes…
🕰️🎁 Gloucestershire-based marketing and PR agency, APT is turning the ‘extra hour’ gained when the clocks go back on Sunday 26th October into a special offer for charities, not-for-profits, and B Corp businesses across the UK. The Cheltenham headquartered firm is giving 15 hours of ‘extra’ team time, to help purpose-driven organisations boost their communications strategies as they head into winter.
The hours can be used flexibly for support with: strategic marketing or PR consultancy sessions, communications planning or campaign brainstorming, copywriting and content support, crisis communications preparation and expert sounding board for upcoming initiatives and plans for 2026.
Email purpose@aptmarketing.co.uk and tell APT who you are and what you would do with your ‘extra’ hour(s) by Wednesday 29th October 2025.
🏗️💸💸 By the developer Morgan Sindalls’ calculations the University of Gloucestershire’s decision to convert the former Debenhams building in Gloucester city centre into a new campus has delivered a total social value of £44 million for the local community. It means that for every £1 spent 71 pence was re-spent within the city’s economy, with a focus on supporting SMEs and local suppliers. Benefits ranged from everything from jobs created to volunteering hours delivered for charities. The 20,000 square metre development opened this summer and is home to the university’s education, psychology and social work programmes as well as a new public library.
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This weekend...
Friday
Stroud Arts Festival 2025 continues today and runs until Sunday 26 October.
There is still chance to see the evocative Poppy Fields by Luxmuralis light show at Gloucester Cathedral. First entry at 6.15pm. Doors close at 10pm.
Saturday
Poppy Fields by Luxmuralis light show at Gloucester Cathedral ends today. First entry at 6.15pm. Doors close at 10pm.
Gloucester Rugby will be looking for its first win of the season when Cherry & Whites play Exeter Chiefs at 3pm away.
Gloucester City FC take on Havant & Waterlooville FC at home in the first round of the FA Trophy.
Cheltenham Town FC play top-of-the-table Walsall FC at home at 12.30pm.
Forest Green Rovers FC (fifth place in the National League) play third-place Boreham Wood at 3pm at home.
Sunday
The Museum of the Moon installation artwork by Luke Jerram is on show at Tewkesbury Abbey until 4 November 2025.
Featured upcoming event…
The Property Forum sets up shop on Thursday 6 November to look at the planning landscape and the impact of reforms around local and national housing targets. This event is sponsored by solicitors Willans LLP, chartered surveyors and planning consultants Evans Jones and business space specialist The Site. Tickets are £33.22 and the event is due to take place from 9am to 11.30am on Thursday 6 November at The Site, 24 Chosen View Road Cheltenham GL51 9LT.
Gloucestershire B Local has sent out an open invitatin to a special Christmas event this December at Gloucester Brewery. The event, which will be part social, from 4pm to 7pm, will begin with a collective action workshop run by Forum for the Future’s executive director and chief acceleration officer, Dr Sally Uren OBE (1-4pm). It will also be a celebration of B Lab UK’s tenth anniversary - the organisation that promotes the B Corp movement. Due to take place on Friday 5 December 1pm to 7pm.
We’ve flagged this one before, but The Raikes Journal is sponsoring one of the awards! On Thursday 27 November the great and the good of Gloucester and beyond will gather at the city’s Guildhall to applaud the shortlisted and the winners of this year’s The Believe in Gloucester Awards. The event, staged by Gloucester BID and sponsored by Gloucester Quays and WSP Solicitors, celebrates the businesses, organisations and individuals who help make the city such a great place to live and work. Find out more here.
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Inflation - and the fight against Gloucestershire’s growing hunger crisis
Food prices remained a focus when inflation figures emerged this week, and with good reason. We spoke to two charities helping thousands unable to afford to eat. Many of them children.
By Andrew Merrell.
When the inflation figures dropped mid-last month most homed in on the 3.8 per cent figure, with commentators picking out the biggest impact was on the cost of food and drink.
The cost of this part of a household’s spend grew at an annual rate of 5.1 per cent.
This week the latest data emerged, and while the headline figures stayed stable for the year to September, month-on-month the cost of food drinks (non-alcoholic ) actually edged down slightly in September to 5.1 per cent - the first fall since May 2024.
The cost of those items actually fell by 0.2 per cent between August and September this year, the first fall in 16 months.
Economists tell us the rise in food bills has been due in part to supermarkets passing on Government decisions to increase employers National Insurance contributions and the minimum wage.
All of which has only compounded what we’ve come to know as ‘the cost of living crisis’.
Few see the impact of that crisis like Gloucester Foodbank and, down the other end of the Golden Valley in Cheltenham, the charity Caring for Communities and People (CCP).
Vicky Ranford, director of Gloucester Foodbank, remembers the day the inflation figures were announced last month (September).
“We actually had our busiest day on that day. Whether that was also because it was cold and people were starting to think about their heating bills too, I don’t know,” said Ranford.
Last year the food bank, which limits the number of food parcels any one household can receive to one a week, supported 10,725 people.
“We did about 17,068 food parcels. Six thousand, three hundred and forty-three of those were for children,” she said.
“If you go back to 2019/2020 we did about 8,000 food parcels in total. We’ve more than doubled in five years.”
Daniel Chun, director of social value and engagement for Cheltenham-headquartered CCP, said: “The volume has massively exploded in the last five years. That’s to do with the cost of living crisis and inflation might have scaled down, but it has not stopped rising.
“And that has also meant the volume of what we offer has risen and the range too – from food staples we are now asked for things like children’s clothes and toys too.
“What has happened as people struggle to feed their families is it has led to deficits elsewhere.”
It’s the same picture at other food banks countywide too in Stroud, Cheltenham, Stonehouse, Kingsway, Matson, Dursely, Berkeley, Coleford, Cinderford, Monmouth, Winchcombe, Tewkesbury, Bishops Cleeve and more.
Many, like Gloucester Foodbank, are part of the nationwide Trussell Trust network and also report a similar trend.
It’s easy to miss the growing section of our community that’s really struggling. Wealth tends to be conspicuous. If you have nothing and can’t feed your family even if you are working, you tend not to shout about it.
But it’s not only your mealtimes that suffer, so can your health. The poverty is also seen in other areas, like housing.
Gloucestershire County Council describes the county as “relatively wealthy”. Figures from as recently as 2020 released by betting giant Paddy Power suggested there were more than 4,000 millionaires in Cheltenham alone.
Yet figures published in September show in Gloucester alone there has been a 47 per cent increase in year-on-year recorded rough sleepers.
The data came to light as the city council announced it was setting up a dedicated role to help tackle homelessness along with running housing drop-in sessions at family hubs.
According to Government figures from 2023 there were 19 people recorded as sleeping rough in the city, a number that rose to 28 in 2024.
Charities believe the real figure is likely to be much higher.
“What we see on the streets is only a small percentage, there’s a lot of people who are classed as hidden homeless,” said Richard Stone, who also works for the CCP.
Chun added: “We have a team of staff, tenancy support workers, who are working with people at quite severe risk of losing their tenancy.
“They’re in housing, but they are right on the threshold - for a number of reasons - of becoming homeless. That could be to do with mental health issues, financial issues.”
At the food banks, the growth in demand is such it’s changed the way the organisations operate.
“The majority of the need is down to the cost of living. Emergencies should be our core business,” said Ranford.
“We were set up to help feed people in emergency situations, but it’s spiralled to become commonplace.
“People get their food vouchers by referral, from the likes of the CCP, local churches, hospitals, doctors’ surgeries. It is not a walk-in service.
“There are now so many people in genuine need, but we have finite resource. Funding does not come from the Government, but from individuals and generous organisations and businesses.”
The CCP was also orignally set up to provide ‘emergency’ support; a safety net for those in need. But it’s become an organisation servicing a much bigger.
“We originally opened the pantry thinking we would be used by less than 100 people. There are currently at least 700 families,” said Chunn.
The Community Pantry, which the CCP created with Fairshare South West, is described as a dignified, accessible food bank offering low-cost food and other essentials for the people that need it most.
One of the other changes both charities have had to contend with is how easy it has been to raise funds.
Hazel Edwards, also from the CCP, said: “What we perhaps saw during and just after the (covid 19) pandemic was so many people who were doing okay lost their jobs and realised they were just a step away from a food bank themselves.
“Where there might have been a bit of pre-covid stigma around food banks, post covid it was different.
“There were suddenly a lot of working people who might not have been quite badly off enough to claim benefits, or any meaningful benefit, but they were suddenly more aware - and they got some insight into how relevant supporting something like the CCP is.
“But in the last 12 months especially fundraising has become much harder.”
Regular readers of The Raikes Journal may have seen other stories we’ve done which highlight how income is no longer keeping track of demand.
Stepping back for a moment from the scale of the problem and focusing instead on the scale of the operation to tackle it, you see a county doing what it can with many generous people keen to help support.
Gloucester Foodbank incredibly employs just one full-time person, and is manned and run by an army of 120 volunteers.
Generous donations come from customers at the city’s Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and other supermarkets too and individuals and businesses.
“We don’t just give out food. We have relationships with lots of other organisations to try to support people,” said Ranford.
“We help signpost people to where they can get financial advice. We collaborate with GL Communities in Matson, which give free advice to help people with their finances or with debt.
“But we have people who come to us who are working. They might have two jobs, but they can’t afford to feed their families every day still.
“Fifty-nine per cent of people who came to us last year for the first time. The growth is exponential.”
“We really appreciate it when businesses step forward to help us. Severn Side Security has just done some fundraising for us too. It’s brilliant.”
It’s the same story again at the CCP.
“Food we can’t distribute, we feed back into the FareShare Scheme (the UK’s national network of charitable food redistributors),” said Edwards.
“Our pantry is open for two days a week. People will come in and pay a nominal fee. Memberships is £4 per week.
“What they get for that is roughly £15 worth of food, but we will tailor what we have for each individual too, as best we can.
“If someone is good enough to donate nappies, for example, that is obviously something we will give to families.
“With the cost of living rising and rising we have seen a lot of families begin to play Russian roulette with their priorities – shall I put the heating on, or shall I feed my family.
“It used to be we had a picture of that being the elderly, but now it is working families who are affected too.”
The CCP also works hard to deliver a joined-up solution – partnering with other organisations better suited at providing those other needs, be that advice around debt, energy usage or health.
And it now does this not just in Gloucestershire, but Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Bristol, South Gloucestershire, Devon, Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire too.
It requires 280 paid employees and 70 bank workers with an estimated 100 volunteers to make it happen.
Chun said: “We believe in and see the impact of partnerships, where we can bring in other sevices.
“Pantry members can be signposted to other services too. They can be exhausted from just trying to make ends meet that they neglect themselves; they miss doctors appointments, they don’t get those blood pressure checks.
“We offer cooking classes for people on budgets, friendship groups. We recently teamed up with the Bridge NHS Service, who came to use to see people we support who might be in need of treatment.”
Edwards added: “It is really important that we signpost and refer. The trick is understanding who these other agencies are and what they can do.
“We might be the best at doing, ‘this and this and this’, but they might be best at ‘that and that and that’.
“It’s using resources as best we can and partnering to ensure the most support gets to where it is needed.
“The more we know, the more we can identify the need and help and get services to where they are needed most.”
Some of the key advice is simply to help individuals access what they are due through the UK’s complex benefits system.
Chun said: “It can be like Dante’s nine circles of hell otherwise. You can be in one queue, exhausted already, only to find you’re in the wrong queue, and the process starts all over again.
“The benefits system can be labyrinthine, technical, painful and disengaging.”
All of which leads us neatly into what will become a subject for another article, the charity’s annual Hamper Scamper campaign, which sees it appeal for shoeboxes full of provisions for children county-wide.
It’s hugely positive, hugely impactful, and ‘yes’, it’s another area driven by demand.
“Hamper scamper. We have pinch points in the year with what we do. One is the run into the summer holidays, where parents are worried how they will cope for seven weeks with the family at home,” said Chun.
“The other is Hamper Scamper, which is the run into Christmas.
“We have 53 of different referral points. External partners, from schools to other organisations.
“One school here in Cheltenham, has referred all 240 of its children to us. So, we go out with the registration form. This year we have 3,000 hampers – 2,400 of which are children’s gifts. That’s an increase of 400 on last year.”
You can find out more here.