It won’t be a happy Christmas for thousands of people across Greater Manchester this year.
The region is firmly in the midst of its third winter of the cost-of-living crisis.
It’s a crisis which has deepened to such an extent that Mancunian charity Resolve Poverty said people no longer choose between heating or eating. They go without both.
“I think the biggest change from sort of three, four years ago is where people might have talked about having a choice between heating and eating… people haven’t really got any kind of choice anymore,” Graham Whitham, the charity’s CEO, explained.
“I think for people on the lowest incomes, the situation continues to deteriorate and that’s the big concern. There’s lots more people experiencing what we call destitution — the sharp end, [where they are] not able to afford the basics.”
Across Greater Manchester, the effects of rising energy bills, rents, and food prices appear to have driven more into destitution. Agnes Lock in Brinnington, Stockport, said the ‘pantry’ she uses to get a full shop for £4.50 is a ‘lifeline’ when ‘things are getting worse’.
Brinnington in Stockport
Carmel in Miles Platting called a similar Social Supermarket scheme ‘amazing’. And Julie in Salford gets a free hot meal from FoodCycle every week which helps her ‘survive’ but she ‘doesn’t know how long for’ because the crisis ‘is getting worse’.
Resolve is calling for the two-child benefit cap to be lifted as an immediate measure the government could take to alleviate the crisis. After Labour came into power in July, Keir Starmer chose not to lift the limit which was imposed by the Conservatives in 2017.
Closer to home, Resolve wants ‘Andy Burnham to embrace an anti-poverty agenda and make it a priority’ by establishing a cross-Greater Manchester anti-poverty strategy, Graham added.
“We haven’t seen a Greater Manchester city-region level to focus on poverty. That said, the individual boroughs have been really good on it — eight out of ten councils in Greater Manchester have anti-poverty strategies, which is a really good important first step in terms of saying ‘tackling poverty is a priority for us, we care about this issue, we’re going to think about how we use our resources to tackle it’.
“But at a Greater Manchester city-region level, we haven’t necessarily seen that equivalent commitment.”
A spokesperson for the GMCA said while it does not have a specific anti-poverty strategy, it does work to reducing poverty across the region through initiatives, such as Live Well centres.
The M.E.N. has spoken to people living below the breadline across Greater Manchester this winter. These are their stories.
The ‘godsend’ in Manchester
More than one in ten households in the Miles Platting & Newton Heath ward is deprived in three or more categories — like education, employment, health, and housing — according to charity Resolve’s latest data.
That makes it the most deprived corner of Manchester. One response to the cost-of-living crisis here is the Social Supermarket at the Parish Church of the Apostles’ hall.
Here, customers can get £30 of groceries for £4. They’ll walk out with a basket full of items like fresh fruit and veg, branded cereals, bread donated by Warburton’s or Martin’s Bakery, frozen ready meals bought from charity FareShare, and one sweet treat.
Lucy McCoulough, project worker
(Image: Jason Roberts /Manchester Evening News)
Volunteer Tina Quinn said it was a ‘godsend’. Project worker Lucy McCoulough said ‘people want the big stuff, like meat, now’, and not just smaller items to top up their shop.
‘Hannah’, 26, is in full-time work on £30,000. She was a regular because her ‘decent salary’ just ‘does not allow me to live comfortably’ as ‘rent takes up all of my paycheck’.
Chanice King, 30, was there with her husband and mother-in-law. To her, the shop is ‘quite useful’.
“We come twice a week,” she explained. “Normally we would spend £50 per week on shopping. Now it’s £20 per week.”
The pensioners eating ‘one meal a day’ in Salford
Julie Hudson, 64, has a free hot meal at St Philip’s Place every Wednesday at 6.30pm. Usually, it’s her only meal of the day.
She goes to Salford FoodCycle for the food, and company, but even that means her life now is about survival, and nothing more.
“I’m surviving but I don’t know how long for,” she said. “I don’t have my heating on at home, I sit with my blanket or stay in bed. I have one meal a day rather than three.”
Julie Hudson (right), Julie Jesson (centre), and Margaret Branton (left), at FoodCycle Salford
Her life was ‘getting worse’, she said: “It used to just be energy bills, but a lot of young people can’t eat now. These places are a lifeline. People come for a meal, but they might not be having another in the day.
“We are angry about it, we’re supposed to be one of the richest countries. Pensioners need more help, but these young families do too.”
Evidence of families struggling was not hard to find. At the same meal, one 24-year-old mum who asked not to be named said: “I’m constantly balancing feeding the children and keeping the house warm, it’s really difficult. But I see many families struggling even worse than me.”
The Stockport suburb where the ‘price of eating is ridiculous’
A similar scheme to the Social Supermarket, Stockport Homes’ ‘pantry’ in Brinnington allows users to pay £4.50 a week for 10 items of food. They can grab meat, fish, tinned items, frozen food, and fresh fruit and veg — which organisers say is worth about £20.
Agnes Lock has been using the ‘lifeline’ for eight years. To her, it helps her avoid a foodbank, but her outlook is grim. She said: “We’re all struggling with the cost of living and things are getting worse. But the food here is very nice.”
A more recent arrival is April Sutton, who has been using it for three months. She can’t work for health reasons, and is in debt. To her, ‘this really helps’ because she is ‘spending £4.50 a week on food’ when ‘the price [of eating] is just getting ridiculous’.
Graham Whitham, CEO of Resolve Poverty
(Image: GMPA)
A happier 2025?
While the picture is bleak across Greater Manchester, there are pockets of hope. Resolve reaches out to families on the breadline to educate them on the range of support available.
“We’ve supported 193 families so far to make £400,000 pounds worth of gains,” Graham Whitham explained. “Most of the gains are unclaimed benefits… a lot of families who could be receiving disability benefits aren’t getting [them], [it] might be that [they] could get support with their council tax with the local council.”
The average gain for every family is £2,000 in a year, Graham added, which can make a big difference in the shopping budget. But while there are signs of encouragement, it’s clear some Mancs need a lot more help very, very quickly.
The GMCA was approached for comment.