Separate research from charity Christians Against Poverty found about 35% of adults in the UK worry about their finances every day.<\/p>\n
As the VAT announcement will save households about \u00a345 a year, “the fear of juggling budgets that simply don’t balance remains”, says Juliette Flachm, Acting Head of Policy and Public Affair.<\/p>\n
“With incomes failing to keep pace with the high cost of essentials, many of the people we see are left facing impossible decisions.”<\/p>\n
JRF’s chief economist Chris Belfield said: “Andy Burnham starts his time as prime minister at a time when the cost-of-living crisis has never been more widely felt.<\/p>\n
“Government policy can work. We need greater intervention to control rental prices, make energy affordable and improve the adequacy of Universal Credit so everyone can afford the essentials.”<\/p>\n
A government spokesperson said: “We’re determined to turn the tide on poverty after years of rising hardship. Our recent statistics show that effort is beginning to make a difference – household incomes have risen 5% in real terms, food bank usage has fallen, and food insecurity is down.<\/p>\n
“Work is underway to tackle the cost-of-living pressures through measures such as increasing the National Minimum Wage, removing the two-child limit, implementing the first ever sustained above inflation increase to Universal Credit, and launching the \u00a31bn Crisis and Resilience Fund which will act as a genuine safety net for those in financial crisis.”<\/p>\n
The figures come from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s poverty tracker, which surveys about 4,000 people from households in the lowest 40% of incomes.<\/p>\n
The charity noted that food inflation averaged 4.1% between May 2025 and May 2026, compared to 3.6% for overall inflation, which has greater impact on lower-income households because they spend more of their income on food.<\/p>\n
But it also noted that the number of poorer households that couldn’t afford to keep their homes warm has fallen by half a million in two years, after the government reduced average household energy bills by about \u00a3150 a year through changes to green levies and support like the warm homes discount.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Separate research from charity Christians Against Poverty found about 35% of adults in the UK worry about their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-704498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}