FOODBANKS have given out a record 1.5 million emergency parcels in a six-month period, including for tens of thousands of first-time users, in statistics described as extremely alarming.

The Trussell Trust says 65 per cent of all the parcels dispatched between April and September via its national network were for families with children.

The situation means a “generation is growing up believing that it’s normal to see a foodbank in every community,” according to the charity chief Emma Revie.

The number of parcels given out from April to September is up by 200,000 in the same period last year.

In those six months in 2021, the figure was less than a million, the charity said. More than half a million parcels were for children in the latest period.

The parcel figure for children living in families who could not afford the essentials is at a record high, which the charity said is a reflection of the “continuing rise in need for the support provided by foodbanks.”

The trust said 320,000 people have needed to use a foodbank for the first time in the past six months, warning that foodbanks “are at breaking point as more and more people in communities across the UK find themselves unable afford the essentials.”

Ms Revie said: “These statistics are extremely alarming. An increasing number of children are growing up in families facing hunger, forced to turn to foodbanks to survive. A generation is growing up believing that it’s normal to see a foodbank in every community. This is not right.”

The organisation repeated calls made by other charities working to tackle poverty, homelessness and helping children, for a so-called “essentials guarantee” to be brought in, meaning universal credit should protect people from going without the basics.

The trust also emphasised the call to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to confirm in the Autumn Statement later this month that benefits will rise in line with inflation.

Separate research last month from social change organisation the Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggested almost four million people, including more than a million children, experienced the most extreme form of poverty last year in Britain.