UK Foodbank Parcels: Trussell 2025 Distribution Stats

The detail

Trussell (the operating name of The Trussell Trust) runs the largest single network of UK food banks, but it is not the only provider. In 2025 its food banks distributed parcels from 1,671 locations; Trussell notes that the Independent Food Aid Network has identified at least 1,172 independent food banks, alongside Salvation Army, school and hospital food banks. Trussell's own figures therefore do not describe the full scale of UK food bank use.

The 2025 release is the first in which Trussell reports its headline statistics by calendar year rather than financial year. The 2,644,835 parcels include 912,216 for children - the fourth year in a row that parcels for children have exceeded 900,000. Headline parcel numbers measure volume, not unique people: a family of three referred twice counts as six parcels.

Trussell attributes the 12% fall on 2024 (and 18% fall on the 2023 peak) mainly to easing inflation and fewer people losing their jobs. ONS CPI inflation averaged 3.4% across 2025, down from the double-digit rates of late 2022. Trussell says the use of food banks is expected to keep falling, including after the two-child limit is scrapped from April 2026, but does not expect it to fall below 2019 levels.

For tax and benefits policy, food bank use is a leading-edge indicator of low-income hardship that does not show up in benefit caseloads alone. Trussell's main policy ask is an "Essentials Guarantee": that the basic rate of Universal Credit always covers the cost of essentials and can never be pulled below that level.