‘I can’t afford to light the stove’: 7.4m households are struggling to afford essentials

A separate study on poverty from the charity Christians found that 35% of adults in the UK worry about their money every day.

While the VAT announcement will save families £45 a year, “the fear of overspending on unbalanced budgets remains,” acting head of policy and public affairs Juliette Flach said.

“With incomes unable to keep up with the high costs of essentials, we see many people facing impossible decisions.”

JRF Chief Economist Chris Belfield said: “Andy Burnham began his tenure as Prime Minister at a time when the cost of living crisis was not widely felt.

“Government policy can work. We need serious intervention to control rents, make energy more affordable and improve universal credit eligibility so everyone can afford the essentials.”

“We are committed to turning poverty into a problem that has been growing for years. The latest statistics show that the effort is starting to make a difference – household income has increased by 5%, food bank use has decreased and food insecurity has decreased,” a government spokesperson said.

“Cost of living pressures are being tackled with measures such as raising the national minimum wage, removing the two-child limit, applying inflation-adjusted Universal Credit and the £1bn Crisis and Resilience Fund, which will act as a real safety net for people in financial difficulty.”

The figure comes from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Poverty Tracker, which lists nearly 4,000 families in the bottom 40% of income.

The charity said it averaged 4.1 per cent between May 2025 and May 2026, with overall inflation at 3.6 per cent, which has a greater impact on low-income families as they spend more on food than they earn.

But the number of poor households who can’t afford to heat their homes fell by half a million, after the government slashed the average household bill by £150 a year through changes to the green tax and subsidies such as the heating homes discount.