Christians Against Poverty has found that 60 per cent of people seeking help with debt are having to borrow money just to pay household bills - and as many as 15 per cent are skipping meals.
It comes as experts at the charity say the situation in Leeds is worsening, with factors including vulnerable employment and mental health concerns exacerbating issues.
It comes as experts at the charity say the situation in Leeds is worsening, with factors including vulnerable employment and mental health concerns exacerbating issues.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00So today Christians Against Poverty has launched its report for the year.
00:04Could you tell me a little bit about what we've learned as a result of that report?
00:08Yeah, so we've launched the report today nationally and what we've found from that,
00:13there are actually some quite stark statistics.
00:15We do a report every year so we can compare year on year
00:19and whereas a lot of people today are waking up with the news that inflation is coming down
00:23and maybe we think we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel,
00:26our report shows that things are actually getting worse, not better.
00:29So we've got some key statistics that, yeah, 60% of the people that responded in our survey
00:35told us that they had to borrow money just to pay the basic household bills,
00:39not to have luxuries, just the basics.
00:41And startlingly 46% of our respondents said that either considered or attempted suicide
00:47because of the debt that they're in.
00:49Quite stark.
00:50You work in Leeds and you see lots of families in the city facing really desperate circumstances.
00:56Could you describe what the situation with debt is like in the city?
01:00Yeah, so I think we might think that people get into debt because of life choices
01:04but what I see day to day is that people just don't have enough money coming in to pay the bills.
01:10So we're not seeing debts come from luxuries,
01:13we're seeing people struggle to pay their rent or their mortgage, their council tax,
01:17their gas, their electric and it's just getting really dire.
01:20I think it's not helped by the fact that a lot of people are in vulnerable employment.
01:25They might be in part-time work, they're in seasonal work, they're in zero-hours contracts.
01:30Is that something that you see a lot of in Leeds?
01:32Yeah, yeah.
01:33A lot of the clients that I see, of the ones that work, a lot of them are in quite unstable employment.
01:40I often see people in and out of work as well.
01:42We think that their situation is going to improve because they've got a job
01:46and then for whatever reason that job ends.
01:49I also see mental health issues being a really big part of the picture
01:53and particularly employers who perhaps don't understand that mental health is just as much a barrier to employment as physical health.
02:01And so people who are struggling with their mental health tend to end up in more vulnerable employment
02:08because of maybe they've had to have days off work.
02:10So it sort of feeds into a vicious cycle of being out of work, on benefits, stressed, in debt,
02:18try and get work and just go round and round the loop.