Citizens Advice Richmond has seen a 42 per cent increase in the number of people in the borough seeking help to put food on the table.

During September the group helped over 840 local people in Richmond with 2,360 advice issues.

Benefits (580 issues), housing (320 issues) and debt (240 issues) generated the most enquiries.

Alarmingly, 250 Richmond residents who are struggling to afford basic essentials asked for advice about charitable support and food banks. This was up by a 'significant' 42 per cent over the previous month.

The government is currently locked in controversy over whether to honour promises to uprate benefits in line with inflation or the lower rises in pay.

Citizens Advice Richmond said there are many myths about people receiving benefits. It pointed out that four in ten in the borough in receipt of benefits are in work and another four in ten are trying to find a job.

The organisation said: "At both a Richmond and national level, we are seeing a crisis which is greater than during the pandemic.

"Issues which we'd normally expect to see peaking in winter reached abnormally high levels in the middle of summer. For example, record numbers of people on low incomes can't afford to top up their prepayment energy meters to buy gas and electricity.

"Some of our clients are extremely worried about how they will cope over the winter months."

The charity pointed to the case of one Richmond woman who lives alone and suffers serious health issues which prevent her from working at the moment.

Because of the need to pay off past debts, she is left with £60 per week to live on – £8.60 a day for food and heating.

Citizens Advice, which helped with food vouchers and charitable support, said this client is now 'terrified' of the coming winter and the difficulty in paying energy and other bills.

The group said: "Many more of our debt clients are now facing negative budgets – where their expenditure on essentials exceeds their income – than we've ever seen before. The scale of this crisis is unprecedented in our experience."

The organisation said outdated and unsubstantiated prejudices against people receiving benefits are making this worse, particularly on housing.

It said: "We see this a great deal in in the private rental market, where unlawful "no DSS" policies which discriminate against people on benefits are based on many landlords' preconceptions that people receiving benefits will be bad tenants."