Among them is 83-year-old widower Bryan, who says he now lives largely in a single room to keep bills down.
“I put a cardigan on and whatever it is you put on to keep yourself warm, shut the door, put the fan heater on to warm the house up,” he said.
“When you see the price keep going up, I think,’ well, I’m sitting in one room’.”
At Affordable Foods in Blurton, Stoke-on-Trent, centre manager Melissa Baydilly says stories like Errol’s and Bryan’s are becoming increasingly common.
The organisation runs a food bank, social supermarket and outreach service helping people with debt, benefits and employment issues.
“Every supermarket you go into, everything’s gone up,” she said.
“There isn’t a place where you would go now and not say there’s at least a 25% to 30% hike on prices.”
She believes pensioners are among those feeling the strain most acutely.
“I don’t believe, in this day and age, our seniors of the city should go to the supermarket, look at the fruit and veg and think, ‘I can’t have apples and oranges this week, I’ve got to pick’.
“Should they be doing that in their 60s and 70s, when they’ve worked all their life?”
