A Snapshot of London’s Food Insecurity Crisis

At a busy food bank in Brent, the pressures of food insecurity come into view: with stretched staff relying on food organisations and weekly donations to provide enough of a balanced diet to keep clients going.

Outside St Mary’s in Willesden, where Brent Foodbank operates, people wait in small knots by the church entrance, some with children on their shoulders, some staring ahead in silence. Inside, the mid-sized steepled church is loud with footsteps, different languages and raised voices. 

Children run between chairs. By the entrance, a volunteer sat behind a computer, checking vouchers on a computer while another at the other end of the hall called out numbers. The system is orderly, but the need seems pressing.

Caroline, a food bank worker, describes their service as built around whatever can be secured that week. “It tends to be milk,” she says, when asked what people request most. 

Because chilled food is harder to distribute, parcels usually go out with staples: rice, flour and a rotating mix of donated goods. Halal food is included. Fresh produce is less predictable. “Every Tuesday we have some fresh fruit,” she says, but it depends on what has been donated or harvested by their sister organisations.

That uncertainty matters in a borough under strain for years. Trust for London says 33% of Brent residents were living in poverty in 2023/24, while 41% of children in the borough were in poverty after housing costs. Across London, 10.6% of households were food insecure in the latest year of data, up from 8.6% the year before.

At the church entrance, people arrive with vouchers issued by referral partners such as Jobcentre services and other local organisations. One man comes in and asks for help with electricity. Caroline explains that fuel vouchers can only be issued once every six months. 

This is an internal policy which works to ration the limited support available through the council. The man leaves the church empty-handed.  Another person is turned away because of this policy. “Food is the priority at the moment,” Caroline tells her.

Fresh food is needed, but this food aid works by necessity rather than preference. Caroline says some clients do ask for healthy options, and the food bank tries to provide different fresh foods through its two suppliers, which include The Felix Project and City Harvest. 

With more resources, she says, more fresh fruit would be welcomed, alongside vegetables such as potatoes and broccoli. Yet clients rarely complain. “We’re a last resort,” she says. “They are grateful because they get some food instead of no food.”

The barriers to healthy foods in Brent are also physical. The high street is choked with industrial dust, lifted by passing trucks on a narrow road. Findings in a 2023 study showed that traffic deposits pollute particles onto leafy greens and vegetables, some of which are not removable even after washing. 

Brent Foodbank says it distributed 12,063 emergency food parcels between April 2024 and March 2025, while The Trussell Trust recorded 2.9 million parcels across the UK in the same period. At St Mary’s, those national numbers narrow in one room, one voucher at a time.