Referrals to food banks across the Canterbury district have risen by more than 40% since the introduction of Universal Credit, a charity has revealed.

Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) says it sent 77 cases - either individuals or families - to the service between July and September - up from 53 in the three months before.

Simone Field, the district manager of the city’s CAB, believes Universal Credit, which was rolled out in Canterbury on July 4, is at fault for the rise.

The controversial new system combines child tax credit, housing benefit, income support, jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance into a single monthly payment.

“It’s a difficult benefit to negotiate if you don’t have savings or families or friends who can chip in to help you,” she said.

“If you don’t keep on top of things, understand what’s going on and budget in order to protect yourself from the ways Universal Credit is calculated and paid then you can be left with absolutely nothing.

“People are having to learn how to budget because it’s paid monthly.
"Built into the system is an initial delay so you’ve got a five-week wait before it even gets started. We’re really lucky that the food bank is there.”

Of the 77 people referred to the food bank between July and September, 32 were children - up from 12 in the previous three months.

Ms Field says the charity has seen a spike in the number of issues brought to it since July, but it has not been as bad as initially feared.

“There are people struggling and there are people having problems, but we were expecting it,” she said.

“We’ve not been as inundated as we’d anticipated because it’s just the new claimants at the moment who have been affected.”

Ms Field has also criticised the amount done to publicise how the Universal Credit system works.

“It is possible for people who are having problems to have money paid directly to their landlords, but that’s not actually promoted all that much,” she said.

“It’s also possible to have different elements of the benefit to be paid to different people in a couple. But that’s not really too well promoted.”

• For more information, visit www.citizensadvice.org.uk