Over the past year, about one home in forty near you turned to a food bank. Here is how you can help this Christmas.
Stand outside your front door and look ten doors each way, on both sides of the street. On average, one of those forty homes has turned to a food bank in the past year.
That is how close it is across North Bristol and South Gloucestershire. It might be a neighbour you wave to, a parent at the school gate, or a nurse coming off a night shift. Most don't need us for long: six in ten households came to us just once last year.
Behind the door
Nobody expects to be the one who needs a parcel. One person who visited our food bank told us:
“I don't know what I would have done without the Foodbank. At first I was really nervous, but I can't believe how helpful and nice everyone is. It's not easy having to come here, but I'm glad I did. I feel that maybe things are looking up and my luck is changing.”
Another said, “You guys make us feel human.”
Our volunteers give people a few days of food when money has run out, and our advisers help with the bigger things, like income and benefits, so fewer people need to come back.
The wider picture
North Bristol and South Gloucestershire are not alone. Trussell, the charity that supports food banks across the UK, estimates that 410,000 people in the South West have so little to live on that they are at risk of needing a food bank in 2026/27. That is 55,000 more than in 2024/25.
Many are already going without. In a survey for Trussell by Ipsos, about one in eight people in the South West (12%) said their household had run out of food in the past year and couldn't afford to buy more. And 7% had cut back on food in the past three months to pay for other essentials, like housing, getting to work or heating.
Children are part of this. Across the UK, 8% of parents (about one in twelve) have skipped meals so their children could eat, and 12% have turned to loans, credit or help from friends and family to cover what their children need.
Helen Barnard, Trussell's director of policy and research, said: “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.” She could be describing the forty doors outside your own.
Prices are rising again just as winter arrives, with another rise in the energy price cap. Trussell is calling for action ahead of the Budget so more people can afford at least the essentials.
See it for your own street
Trussell has built a tool that shows how many emergency food parcels were given out near you in the past year. Type in your postcode and see the number for where you live.
It counts every Trussell food bank in your area, so it will be higher than ours alone. It leaves out the other charities and community groups that give out food, so the full picture is bigger still.
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