Food for Thought - foodbanks in England's small towns in 2019 (2013 and 2016 surveys revisited) - Pre-print (original) (raw)
This note summarizes the results of a survey of town clerks in England’s small (“market”) towns. The survey was designed to find out how many towns have, have had, are intending to have, or have never had, a food bank. Two broadly similar surveys were conducted in 2013 and 2016. The data obtained from this survey are in line with those from the previous surveys, in that they show that the number of foodbanks has continued to increase. The rate of the increase, however, has slowed. The narrow focus of the three surveys is deliberate. It reflects the writer’s interest in small towns, rural poverty, and the relationship between these towns and their hinterlands, aspects of which he researched in the 2000s, when few towns had foodbanks., Since then the number of foodbanks has increased to the point where most towns have one; something which would have been virtually unimaginable in the 1990s. The change is significant. The normalization of foodbanks has implications, politically, and morally. The findings of this, the two previous surveys, other research and media coverage, suggests that things have got worse.
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