More than nine million people across the UK could be at risk of needing a food bank by 2029, according to new analysis from the Trussell Trust.
The charity says the ongoing cost-of-living crisis is continuing to put pressure on people on the lowest incomes, with rising costs making it harder to afford essentials.
The anti-poverty charity said projections are based on Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts on average earnings growth, forecasts on social security payments, and on rent payments.
The modelling also takes into account policies such as the government’s removal of the two-child benefit limit from last April, as well as the uprating of universal credit.
In 2025/26, 9.07 million people needed help from a foodbank, a previous record high.
However, projected estimates for the year to March 2027 are just under nine million people being in “severe hardship” and, therefore, at risk of needing to use a food bank, followed by a little over nine million for the 12 months to March 2028.
Trussell said: “If 9.1 million people experience severe hardship in 2028/29 this would put the number of people at risk of needing to use a food bank at record levels, according to the available data.”
The charity’s severe hardship data goes back to 2022/23 when there were 8.2 million people in that situation.
Earlier this year, Trussell reported a 12% drop in the total food parcel numbers in 2025 compared with 2024, which it said reflected a “slowdown in the rising cost of essentials – alongside fewer people losing their jobs”.
But Trussell’s director of policy and research Helen Barnard said while pressure eased a little for some families when the “especially sharp price spikes seen in 2022 came down”, inflation remaining high has meant “more and more people since 2024/25 are finding it difficult to afford the essentials”.
She added: “Rising costs in the coming months, especially for energy, are likely to mean more people will find it difficult to afford essentials like food and heating.
“People just a few streets over from you are sitting in the dark to save electricity, skipping meals so their kids can eat, feeling invisible and alone as they try to get by for weeks and weeks without any support.”
Jessica Foster, Head of Church Engagement at the Trust, told Premier Christian News that churches can play a vital role in supporting people in poverty: “We desperately need churches just to keep supporting our food banks for as long as they're needed. We're so grateful that so many churches give food, give time, give spaces and venues, and we also really need people wherever they are in their communities to keep your eye out for people who might be struggling, because often one of the impacts of not having enough to eat is you feel completely invisible, you feel unseen. You stay at home. You maybe don't put your lights and your heating on, and you're hidden. Those people might be in a library, in school, maybe in a doctor's waiting room. So let's try, as a Christian community and as churches, to reach out and be really open and welcoming.
“So anything we can do as a Christian community to support families at the moment is is brilliant because we're so concerned about generation after generation growing up facing hunger and hardship”.