FOOD banks are seeing a surge in demand from rural parishes as Islanders feel the squeeze from higher mortgage repayments and the rising cost of living.
The increase has even prompted one charity to trial a new mobile food bank to go out to rural areas, in order to understand the true level of demand outside of St Helier.
Dominic Egré, operations manager at St Vincent de Paul, which offers a range of support to Islanders, attributed the rise to increasing numbers of social-housing estates in rural parishes, and said the mobile food bank was being trialled in response to families and the elderly struggling to travel into town.
‘Currently all the major food banks are in town, so, unless you live within walking distance of St Helier, they can be very hard to access,’ he said.
‘Those not in metropolitan parishes can find it really difficult to get to town if they have children or are older.
‘After our trial run in September we will write to Constables to ask which areas of their parish have social housing or are most in need of access to a food bank.’
He added: ‘We’re hoping to begin our mobile food bank service at the end of September as part of the winter service provided at St Vincent de Paul.’
Last autumn, both St Vincent de Paul and Grace Trust Jersey warned they were increasingly being contacted by working Islanders who were finding that their wage was no longer enough to get them through the month.
At the time, Mr Egré said that nearly 40% of people asking for help were working Islanders, who before the cost-of-living crisis were able to manage but had now been ‘literally pushed to the edge’.
Speaking to the JEP yesterday, Salvation Army officer Richard Nunn said: ‘People are being squeezed across the Island and it is obvious there would be an increased demand for food bank services outside of town, what with mortgage rates going up significantly and income support struggling to keep up with the cost of living.’
While Mr Nunn said the ‘vast majority’ of those seeking support at the Salvation Army’s food bank lived in urban parishes such as St Saviour, St Clement and St Helier, he added that they were seeing Islanders travel from further afield.
Both charities said they were experiencing greater demand in general.
Alongside food, Mr Egré said they hoped to provide electricity to charge items, appliance testing, and access to a microwave and kettle.
Commenting on the mobile food bank trial, Reform Jersey leader Sam Mézec praised the ‘amazing job’ that charities in the Island did to support financially vulnerable people but added that it was ‘an outrage that there is so much demand for their services on such a wealthy island’.
‘In the last decade, the number of people in Jersey earning over a million pounds a year quadrupled. At the same time the number of people relying on food banks has increased,’ he said.
‘This is a clear sign that our economy is broken and that the government’s actions to reduce inequality are failing.’
