Food Poverty across Warwickshire - a new report from CASW

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02 March 2026

Today, we are sharing new original research on the current drivers of ‘food poverty’ across Warwickshire in the first half of winter 2025-26.

We defined ‘food poverty’ as a combination of one-off emergency ‘food crisis’ and ongoing food ‘insecurity’ .

We examined 120 cases in which Citizens Advice clients sought emergency food support between October and December 2025. We made individual determinations of what took those clients ‘over the line’ from being potentially food poor, exhibiting classically conventional indicators of financial struggles, to actually actively seeking emergency food support.

Using our own filter for categorising these drivers, we then subcategorised them by whether the clients lived in rural/semi-rural areas or urban areas (urban areas were defined as population centres of 10,000 people or more), and whether they were subject to ‘food crisis’ or ‘food insecurity’.

Using this data, we explored three main questions:

What are the current drivers of ‘food poverty’, as a whole, across Warwickshire in the pre-Xmas period?
How do drivers of ‘food poverty’ for residents of urban areas compare with drivers for those living in rural and semi-rural areas?
How do drivers of one-off ‘food crisis’ in urban areas compare with drivers of one-off ‘food crisis’ in rural and semi-rural areas?

Our findings surprised us. Here are the main ones:

Overall, we identified 30 different drivers of ‘food poverty’ operating across Warwickshire, from low or interrupted benefits income and low wages, to ongoing debt burdens and miscellaneous one-off family trauma.
Only two drivers were common to the top three for urban and rural/semi-rural areas alike - ‘regular, but insufficient, income (benefits)’ and ‘unmanageable (primarily) priority debt repayments’; the former being the number one driver across all data subsets.
Beyond these two drivers, the degree of overlap between subsets was surprisingly low.

Across all subsets, two further findings were worthy of note; both of which are essentially anecdotal in the sense that we did not collect quantitative data on either.

Firstly, it was noteworthy how many cases could have been prevented without recourse to emergency food support if the clients had even a minimum of financial resilience, that is, savings.

Secondly, it was noteworthy how many cases could have been prevented if those households involved had been able to access free, independent, impartial and confidential information, advice and guidance at an earlier stage; either to claim income to which households were entitled, or to resolve debt issues or other traumas.

Food poverty across Warwickshire is triggered by many drivers. Surprisingly, there is only limited overlap between drivers in urban areas and drivers in rural and semi-rural areas. Furthermore, there is only limited overlap between drivers of one-off ‘food crisis’ in urban areas and drivers of one-off ‘food crisis’ in rural and semi-rural areas.

This research represents a snapshot in time and in comparative geographies. Soon, we hope to extend our evidence base to include cases between January and March 2026; in doing so, completing a full picture for Winter 2025-26.

Despite its clear limitations, we believe this work does give some pointers to decision-makers at the local and national level, particularly around the need to get the design and delivery of the Crisis and Resilience Fund right.

To access the report, go to https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tOor7yHG1x6OwaF_vVuCThtqES4WbNmFykS6nxgG_W0/edit?usp=drive_link .

If you would like to discuss any issues arising from the report, please contact Ed Hodson at ed.hodson@casouthwarwickshire.org.uk .

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