Metro visited Epping Forest Foodbank in Essex to mark National Foodbank Day (Picture: Dominic Whisson)
Susanna bumped into a friend while she walked through the Essex town of Loughton. Exchanging small talk, she was asked what she was up to. ‘Oh, just shopping,’ Susanna replied, holding on tightly to her bag.
In actual fact, the 61-year-old, who is going by a pseudonym, was on her way to St Mary’s Church. There, she turned past the main hall and through two sets of double doors where tables of fresh bread, eggs and tinned goods awaited her.
‘I don’t know why I didn’t tell my friend I was going to a foodbank,’ Susanna tells Metro, as she sits at a small table overlooking the church car park. ‘I suppose it feels like a handout.’
It’s been eight weeks since Susanna, originally from Ilford in London, started using the Epping Forest Foodbank. The great-grandmother has worked in retail, recruitment and security over the last four decades and hopes to train to become a bus driver, but is currently between jobs.
Universal Credit allowance not enough
‘I was born and bred in this country and my parents are from Barbados,’ Susanna says while explaining how she came to be in St Mary’s Church.
‘I’m on Universal Credit at the moment and there are times they call you for a phone interview. I’ve missed those phone calls twice which means they’ve sanctioned me. I’m behind on money and the worst case scenario is that I’ll have to choose between food and gas. I’ve never been in a situation like this in my working life. I hate going to bed hungry and cold.’
Actor Adrian McLoughlin sorts through food at St Mary’s Church in Loughton, Essex (Picture: Dominic Whisson)
Ukrainian translations are available alongside the items available (Picture: Dominic Whisson)
Today, Susanna has loaded up on instant noodles which she can cook with hot water from the kettle. She avoids using the hob to save money on energy bills.
‘This place is amazing,’ she adds. ‘Hopefully it won’t be a permanent thing, but more to help me get on my feet until I find work again. Here you get everything; fresh bread, tissues, soap, washing powder. I am so happy I’ve found it. And the people here never make you feel uncomfortable. They always ask “would you like something else?”’
Poverty ‘hidden’ in Epping Forest
There’s a common misconception that the majority in Epping Forest are wealthy, that poverty simply doesn’t exist there. The area is home to one of the country’s priciest postcodes and TV shows such as The Only Way Is Essex – filmed partially in Loughton. Plus, there’s small mountains of banknotes in the nearby village of Debden, where the UK’s money-making factory operates for the Bank of England.
‘People make sweeping assumptions that poverty doesn’t exist in this area,’ theatre critic Fiona Mountford, who volunteers as a driver at the Epping Forest Foodbank, tells Metro. ‘But they’re very wrong. The need is hiding in plain sight.’
A foodbank user picks up a bag of bread and vegetables ahead of a hospital appointment (Picture: Dominic Whisson)
The Epping Forest Food Bank – which is part of the Trussell Trust network – helped 316 people in the 2013/2014 period. Fast forward ten years, and the number has risen to 9179. Around half of those are children.
People’s pets are also supported. Volunteers can tell when someone is worried about feeding their cat for example, as they’ll often ask for extra tuna. When this happens, they’ll gently flag that they have entire boxes of pet food available as well.
For Mark, a 58-year-old Army veteran, the food bank is a lifeline not just to him, but to his 90-year-old mother who has dementia.
Mark has been on Universal Credit since April 23 and ought to get £396 a month. But, like Susanna, he’s faced sanctions for falling behind on the admin side of things.
Mark told Metro both he and his 90-year-old mother rely on the foodbank (Picture: Dominic Whisson)
An example of a foodbank allocation form where people can choose their items (Picture: Dominic Whisson)
‘I got £6.45 in July,’ Mark tells Metro. ‘And this month [August] I got nothing. It’s unbelievable. I’ve always worked, 20 years in security and the Army before that. Because I now care for my mum, it impacts the kind of work and hours I can do. But I promised my father before he died that I’d care for her, so that’s what I’ll do.’
Each day is different at St Mary’s, volunteers never know who will walk through the door. Occasionally rough sleepers come in for help. When foodbank coordinator Eileen Salman meets people like this, she gives them more than just food.
‘We had a young lad come in the other day. He was a rough sleeper in Epping Forest,’ Eileen tells Metro.
‘I think people like him are the least helped in society. They’re not seen as vulnerable as they’re strapping young men. I greet everyone with a smile and sometimes just want to give them a cuddle and say it will be okay. If someone is just about holding it together, a hug can help let things out.’
Jacob (left) and Eileen (right) showed Metro around the Epping Forest Food Bank (Pictures: Dominic Whisson)
Eileen also keeps a watchful eye on the yard in front of St Mary’s Church where people will occasionally hover; too nervous to come in. ‘That happened more before the pandemic,’ she clarifies. ‘I think, now, there’s not that sense of perceived shame in asking for help. Not so much at least.
‘And that’s encouraging.’
Eileen, who worked as an NHS phlebotomist before she retired, continues: ‘Sometimes people will mention they’re due to get their benefits again the next week or start a new job. So I say to them “with the best will in the world, I hope I don’t see you again. I hope you’ll be sorted and back on your feet.’
The hub of the foodbank machine
Behind the scenes of the Epping Forest Foodbank is operations manager Bob Glasgow, who works at a warehouse ten minutes away from St Mary’s.
It’s there food donated from schools, businesses, churches and individuals is sorted through and distributed to foodbank ‘hubs’ where people can visit. Bob takes Metro’s donations and gets to work, weighing the bag before moving each item in a crate where another volunteer will write expiry dates in marker pen.
Bob Glasgow wanted to make a difference in his local community (Picture: Dominic Whisson)
Tuna will go into a tinned fish crate, gluten free pasta into a crate for people with Coeliac disease or food intolerances, tins of beans and sausages into an ‘extras’ crate and sanitary pads into a ‘toiletries’ box.
Of course, sometimes unwanted donations come in. Sardines from 1990, biscuits turned to mush inside aged packaging, expiry dates too faded to read; volunteers have seen it all.
‘If we don’t have donations, we have to buy stuff in,’ Bob tells Metro as he flits between crates. Financial donations can be made to the foodbank, as well as food.
‘We don’t get discounts from the supermarkets and you can’t get anything now for under 85p or a pound. We have a tin of ham here that cost £3 and even a jar of coffee is probably £2 now 18 months ago it was half of that. We can spend a lot of money to just refill the shelves. We need to feed the people even if the donations aren’t coming in.’
A visit from TV star Stacey Solomon in May 2024 led to a much-needed wave of support. There was £1,500 worth of donations after the former X-Factor contestant shared a story to the charity’s Give Today page on her Instagram Story.
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Once donations at the warehouse are sorted through, volunteer delivery drivers take crates to various hubs, like St Mary’s Church in Loughton, to top up their stocks. One of those drivers is Martin Harris.
The 63-year-old, who lives in Chingford, has worn various hats over the years; he’s worked in the building trade, IT and even an asbestos company. When work dried up in 2023, he faced an impasse.
He tells Metro: ‘I have to be honest; if I hadn’t had the foodbank, I’d have probably stolen food to eat and stay alive. That would have been the only way. I got £360 a month in benefits and that didn’t cover food after paying bills, council tax and my car insurance. I was at a job fair when a guy produced a voucher for the foodbank, and I never looked back.’
Now, every Friday, Martin spends the day driving between the foodbank warehouse and hubs to deliver food. With arms full of tattoos, one gold tooth and a think Essex accent, Martin says he isn’t society’s idea of a food bank worker. But he likes to break the mould, and hopes to encourage more men to volunteer.
Martin was once a foodbank user, now he’s a volunteer driver (Picture: Dominic Whisson)
‘I’ve told some people I volunteer here and they don’t believe me,’ he laughs. ‘So now each week on Facebook I post pictures from the van and where I’ve been. I call it “Foodbank Friday.”’
More than ‘just food’
Like all Trussell Trust food banks, Epping Forest asks what has brought people to their church that day and, through these conversations, are able to refer people on to other organisations that can help, such as Integration Support for issues with migration and Rosie’s Place, a centre for Domestic violence victims in nearby Harlow.
Over the last ten months the foodbank has also employed a benefits advisor, Rosie Coffey, thanks to a partnership with another local organisation Voluntary Action Epping Forest and the Trussell Trust. She has supported 206 people so far and helped them collectively to secure almost £166,000 of financial support that they were eligible for but not receiving.
‘Rosie fights the system to get people the support they deserve,’ Jacob Forman, director of the Epping Forest Foodbank, tells Metro.
The cost of living crisis has driven more people into poverty (Picture: Metro.co.uk)
He adds: ‘People are made to jump through so many hoops to get financial aid.
‘We had a lady ask for a delivery because she’d had her foot amputated due to complications from diabetes. On the third delivery I asked, “doesn’t your Personal Independence Payment (PIP) plan cover Sainsbury’s deliveries?” It turned out she didn’t know what PIP even was or that she was entitled to it. No-one at the hospital had mentioned it.
‘It’s like we’re covering cracks in the system.’
Epping Forest Foodbank collected data from the 2023/24 year and found that debt, sudden unemployment and benefit delays were among the circumstances which led to people being referred. What’s more, ‘no access to support due to immigration status’ was a common reason people needing support.
Jacob speaks to Metro from his small office above the foodbank warehouse, where thank you cards surround his desk.
Martin, Jacob and Bob outside the Epping Forest Foodbank warehouse (Picture: Dominic Whisson)
He recalls a young coffee shop worker who struggled to support her parents when they fled the war in Ukraine and received no support from the Government. Then there’s the older man in a caravan who ‘just didn’t eat’ some days to save money, along with the many others who have seen their lives transformed by the foodbank. There’s also hundreds of children helped each year through the Food in School Holidays (FISH) programme.
‘Of course, it’s amazing helping people and getting thank you cards,’ Jacob says. ‘But what is even more amazing is when we never see people again. As that means things have got better for them.
‘We’re a Christian organisation but I’m actually Jewish. There’s a saying; “if you’ve saved one life, you’ve saved the entire world. So if you help one person, to them it is as if you have supported the entire world.”
‘We all want to go home at the end of the day feeling like the world is slightly better than when we turned up.’
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