Supermarkets must help those in England’s ‘food deserts’: Which?

Consumer group Which? is calling on the the big supermarkets to step up support for low-income customers marooned in England’s “food deserts” during the cost-of-living crisis. 

According to Which?, the poorest parts of Birmingham, Liverpool, Bradford, Durham and the Welsh valleys should get targeted help. The study found nearly half of neighbourhoods in the north-east of England – and about a third in Yorkshire, the West Midlands and the north-west of England – lacked easy access to supermarkets, and had poor availability for online deliveries and low levels of car ownership, making it much harder for low-income households to put food on the table, The Guardian stated. 

All of the neighbourhoods in the Birmingham Hodge Hill parliamentary constituency lacked easy access to cheap and healthy supermarkets, the study found, adding that there is a similar scarcity of affordable food shops in Knowsley on Merseyside, where 96 per cent of local neighbourhoods unable to easily access affordable and healthy food shops. 

South West Norfolk too have limited access to supermarkets and other food shops. All the areas most in need of food support tend to have higher levels of poverty, deprivation and fuel poverty, greater use of food banks and higher take-up of free school meals, the study says. 

On a regional basis, the north-east of England is the worst affected, with nearly half (45 per cent) of local neighbourhoods facing poor access to cheap and healthy food, closely followed by Yorkshire and the Humber (37 per cent), the West Midlands (36 per cent) and the north-west (32 per cent).