In the most basic terms, these are people with many overlapping forms of “destitution”.

They have been missing meals, often for days at a time, going without heating and electricity. One in five had slept rough in recent months.
They are at the lowest end of the low-income spectrum, with an average income below £320 per month, described as living in “extreme financial vulnerability”.

These are usually people of working age, middle-aged rather than young or old, mostly living in rented accommodation.

About five out of six are without a job and depending on benefits.

But among those in employment, this is usually unpredictable, insecure work, with an unreliable income.

The long stagnation in wages seems to have made it harder to be self-reliant through work – and the research warns of the rising number of jobs that are low-paid and insecure.

The best inoculation against needing a food bank seems to be a full-time permanent job.

Although there have been reports of people in decent jobs turning to food banks, the research suggests this remains very unusual.

But there are some distinct characteristics of food bank users that are different from the general face of poverty.

The most typical users are single men, lone mothers with children and single women – between them accounting for about two-thirds of all food bank users.
Social isolation, the lack of a friend in need, plays a part, as well as threadbare finances.

Ill health is a very common feature. Almost two-thirds of users had a health condition, half of households using food banks included someone with a disability and a third had mental health problems.

Debts and a long tail of repayments are often dragging them down.
They can be months behind with bills and having to pay back bank loans, credit cards, loan sharks, pawn shops and payday lenders.

Food bank users are overwhelmingly UK born and even though 4% have a university degree, they have much lower education levels than the average working-age population.

Put together, it shows people living closest to the edge being the first to be pushed over. Lone adults, saddled with debts, with ill health, high levels of depression and anxiety and few qualifications to get a more secure job.

These are people on the margins in many ways.

But the researchers show that living on “chronic low incomes” and facing “severe food insecurity” are not necessarily the tipping points.

There is often something else – an income or expenditure “shock” – that puts them on the road to the food bank. This can be an rise in rent, energy bills or the cost of food; or it could a delay in benefits or fewer working hours.
On wafer-thin margins, it can be enough to literally turn out the lights and leave nothing for food.

The research is also a reminder that the prevalence of food banks is a recent phenomenon, a tale of our times. In 2010-11, the Trussell Trust gave out 61,500 food parcels, but by 2016-17 this had risen to almost 1.2 million.

Rachel Loopstra, leader author of the report and lecturer in nutrition at King’s College London, said people had been “surprised and shocked” at the growth in food banks.

But there had not been enough understanding of the circumstances that meant people ended up having to ask for food.

Dr Loopstra said the study showed how apparently small changes in income or outgoings could leave people with absolutely nothing, even for the most basic of needs.

The current social housing regulator – the Homes and Communities Agency – focuses its resources on the “financial viability” and “governance” of housing associations; its interest in service delivery is almost non-existent. Some of the commission’s inspections focused on safety issues in social housing (particularly gas safety).

The HCA still has the powers to inspect social housing providers under the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008. These powers should be invoked to assess whether the systems are in place to protect tenants in future from the sort of catastrophe that befell Grenfell Tower.
Roger Jarman
Former head of housing, Audit Commission

• Inequality and indifference to the rights of poor people may well be the underlying ethos that threatens British society, but the translation of that indifference into legislative collective punishment is the cause. The core injustice can be traced to the Localism Act 2011, introduced by Eric Pickles, which swept away independent oversight of local government, to be replaced by “armchair auditors”.

Couple that with the media-led frenzy for deregulation, the wholesale commercialisation of public services, and the diminution of any sense of public service in government, and the end result is self-evident. Not just Grenfell Tower and the associated paralysis of any official response, but in the state of our schools, hospitals, transport infrastructure, and staffing levels of our emergency services. Pursuit of profit without a moral compass has failed; the country needs a change in direction.
Eric Goodyer
Berwick-Upon-Tweed, Northumberland

• The government website makes the following boast: “Over 2,400 regulations scrapped through the Red Tape Challenge; Saving home builders and councils around £100m by reducing 100s of locally applied housing standards to 5 national standards; £90m annual savings to business from Defra reducing environmental guidance by over 80%; Businesses with good records have had fire safety inspections reduced from 6 hours to 45 minutes, allowing managers to quickly get back to their day job”.

The problem with regulations is that their utility and importance only become apparent when what they are intended to control goes wrong as it did so tragically at Grenfell Tower. How many of the 2,400 regulations removed were standing in the way of other tragedies occurring? We will not know until the next tragic event. Reducing the time for fire safety inspections does not look as smart now as it did when the government started boasting about it.
Dr John Cookson
Bournemouth

• Will families left homeless by the Grenfell Tower fire be exempted from the ever lower means tests for benefits? Anything more than the initial guaranteed £5,500 minimum payment to each household (Report, 19 June) will fall foul of the limits for working tax credits and income-rated benefits, which have been frozen at £8,000 and lowered to £6,000 for universal credit when payments are tapered away and stopped for those with more than £18,000 in savings.

Rather than announcing ad hoc exceptions, like those following the Manchester bombings, is it not time to exempt all compensation awards and reconsider what these petty-minded benefit rules do for anybody saving for a deposit who loses their job or becomes ill? They actively discourage saving and self-reliance.
David Nowell
New Barnet, Hertfordshire